THE SCOTTISH
HISTORICAL REVIEW
PUBLISHED BY
MACLEHOSE, JACKSON & CO., GLASGOW
IJtiblishrrs to the Snibctsitg
MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON
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MCMXX
§.
SCOTTISH
REVIEW
Volume Seventeenth
GLASGOW
MACLEHOSE, JACKSON AND CO.
PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY ^
1920 •'
750
S13
v./7-l
Contents
I'AGK
A Neglected Source for the History of the Commercial
Relations between Scotland and the Netherlands during
the 1 6th, 1 7th and i8th Centuries. By S. Van
Brakel, Utrecht - i
Bellenden's Translation of the History of Hector Boece.
By R. W. Chambers and Walter W. Seton 5
The Orkney Townships. By J. Storer Clouston - 16
Lord Guthrie and the Covenanters. By D. Hay Fleming 46
The Causes of the Highland Emigrations of 1783-1803.
By Miss Margaret I. Adam - 73
Old Edinburgh. By Sir James Balfour Paul - 90
Scottish Middle Templars, 1 604- 1869. By C. E. A. Bedwell i oo
List of Scottish Middle Templars - 103
The Fenwick Improvement of Knowledge Society, 1834-
1842. With an Introduction by George Neilson 118, 219
The Spanish Story of the Armada. By W. P. Ker - 165
Clerical Life in Scotland in the Sixteenth Century. By
Sir James Balfour Paul - 177
Le Testament du Gentil Cossoys. By David Baird Smith 190
Constitutional Growth of Carlisle Cathedral. By the Rev.
Canon Wilson - 199
Minutes of the Fenwick Emigration Society, 1839. With
Note by George Neilson - 221
vi Contents
fAGK
A Side Light on the 1715. By Ninian Hill - - 225
Dunstaffnage Castle. By J. R. N. Macphail, K.C. - - 253
The Distaff Side : a Study in Matrimonial Adventure
in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. By Sir
Bruce Seton, Bart. - 272
Scots Pearls. By Maria Steuart - - 287
Social Life in Scotland in the Sixteenth Century. By
Sir James Balfour Paul - 296
The Navy in the Great War. By W. Macneile Dixon - 310
Reviews of Books 50, 138, 234, 317
Communications and Notes —
MacBeth or MacHeth. By Professor C. Sanford Terry 155, 338
An Edinburgh Funeral in 1785. By D. Hay Fleming - 156
Coins in Use in Scotland in the Sixteenth Century. By J.
Storer Clouston - 156
Kilmaron Family in Fife. By J. H. Stevenson - 157
Alexander called the Schyrmeschur. . By David Baird Smith - 158
A Scottish Pupil of Ramus. By David Baird Smith - 158
University of Nancy - - 161
Seigneur Davie. By A. Francis Steuart - 161
The Mint of Crosraguel Abbey - 163
Sheer-Cloth'd. By W. A. Craigie, Oxford - 248
The Last Days of Clementina Walkinshaw. By A. Francis
Steuart - - 249
Scottish Middle Templars. By Rev. John Warrick - 251
MacBeth or MacHeth. By James Gray - - 338
Scots Peerage - - 339
Printers to the University of Glasgow - - 340
Index - - 341
Illustration
PAGE
Portrait of the Rev. William Greenwell, D.C.L., F.R.S., F.S.A. 64
Contributors to this Volume
Margaret I. Adam
C. E. A. Bedwell
S. von Brakel
J. M. Bulloch
R. W. Chambers
John Clark
J. Storer Clouston
W. A. Craigie
W. Macneile Dixon
John Edwards
D. Hay Fleming
James Gray
Miss Haldane
R. K. Hannay
Ninian Hill
Hilda Johnstone
Theodora Keith
W. P. Ker
Robert Lamond
Mary Love
George Macdonald
W. MacGill
James MacLehose
J. R. N. Macphail
Prof. Archibald Main
Andrew Marshall
S. N. Miller
Sheriff Scott Moncrieff
George Neilson
Sir J. Balfour Paul
Prof. R. S. Rait
W. D. Robieson
Sir Bruce Seton, Bart.
Walter W. Seton
David Baird Smith
J. H. Stevenson
A. Francis Steuart
Maria Steuart
Robert Stewart
Prof. Sanford Terry
Prof. T. F. Tout
Rev. John Warrick
Rev. Canon Wilson
The
Scottish Historical Review
VOL. XVIL, No. 65
OCTOBER, 1919
A Neglected Source for the History of the
Commercial Relations between Scotland
and the Netherlands during the i6th> iyth
and 1 8th Centuries
IT is well known that during the sixteenth and, in a lesser
degree, also during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
the trade with the Netherlands was the most important part of
the commercial relations between Scotland and the European
Continent. During the greater part of this period the Scottish
trade had its official centre at Veere, and although the monopoly
of the staple port was continually infringed by many Scottish
merchants, Veere and the neighbouring ports of Middelburg
and Vlissingen (Flushing), remained the centre of the intercourse
between the two countries.
I? The Scottish staple at Veere has lately been the subject of
two bulky volumes. At almost the same time appeared the
thoroughly worked book of Davidson and Gray: The Scottish
Staple at Veerey and M. P. Rooseboom's Scottish Staple in the
Netherlands, whose principal merit lies in the great mass of
documents printed in the Appendix. Both authors have studied
the documents of the State Archives at Middelburg. Unhappily
they both left untouched a series of documents containing a
valuable source for their work. Neither of them seems to have
been aware that the accounts of the ' Water baljuw' (Sheriff of
the Waters) of the province of Zeeland contained an almost
S.H.R. VOL. XVII.
2 History of the Commercial Relations
uninterrupted list of all foreign ships entering one of the ports
of Zeeland from 1517 to 1807.
This 'baljuw' collected the so-called 'ankerage-geld' (anchor duty)
a recognition due for the use of the harbours. In his accounts
of this duty the baljuw had to make a separate entry for every
ship entering one of the ports. In this entry is mentioned the
name of the ship, the name of its captain, its bulk, the port of
departure, and the nature of its cargo.1 Although these instruc-
tions were not always obeyed to the letter, it is clear from the
beginning, that these accounts contain very valuable materials for
the history of the commercial relations of the Netherlands with
other countries. The duty had to be paid by the master of
every ship not being c free.' Although there is nowhere to be
found an enumeration of the nations and towns whose inhabitants
had acquired this freedom,2 and the successive instructions of the
waterbaljuw direct this functionary uniformly to conform himself
to the ' customary rules,' it may be taken for granted that at least
since the beginning of the seventeenth century only the inhabi-
tants of the province of Zeeland and of the other United
Provinces8 enjoyed this privilege.
This was the conclusion to which I came during a short stay
at Middelburg in the summer of 1918. Afterwards my opinion
was endorsed by Dr. Z. W. Sneller, now vice-director of the
Royal Commission for the Publication of Historical Documents
at the Hague, who * is perhaps the best authority in this
matter. At any rate all Scottish vessels since 1581 had to pay
the anchor duty. This is made clear by the superscription of the
accounts of these years, which state uniformly that the account
1 E.g. Den XXI. Novembris 1644 is ingekomen Jan de Ridder van
Zandwitz met zijn schip geladen met hout en appelen, groot vii lasten . . .
I Sch. vii gr. vl.
Dito is inghekomen Olivier Danijns van Zandwitz met 't schip de fortuin of
London met smeekolen, groot xii lasten, facit . . . I Sch. vis.
(7 Maart 1645) is inghekomen Codbert Dunneton komende van London met
chip de Spidwell groot vi lasten, facit Sch. vis.
2 All I am able to say on this subject is that the ' Easterlings ' enjoyed this
privilege up to 1477, but in the port of Veere only. The English seem to have
been exempt of the payment still longer. In which year they lost it, is not clear,
but at any rate they had to pay since 1581, as they are specially mentioned in
the instructions of the waterbaljuw issued in that year.
3 Even this last exemption was not always maintained. In a few cases the
duty was paid by inhabitants of the province of Holland as well.
4 Cf. Sneller : Wakhertn in de if eeuto, 1917, p. 66.
between Scotland and the Netherlands 3
contains the duty paid by ' English, French, Scottish and other
unfree ships.'
Although the terms of this superscription may lead to the
assumption that it was the nationality of the ships, i.e. of the
owners of the vessel, which decided whether the ankerage-geld
was due or not, practically only the nationality of the skipper
was inquired into. Among the documents, sent in by the
waterbaljuw to substantiate his accounts, there are to be found a
great many of the original declarations, written and signed
by the skippers on their arrival, which declarations served to
calculate the amount of the fee, due in each case. As in these
declarations only the nationality of the captain is mentioned, it is
impossible that any other standard was used to determine whether
the ship was free or not. It seems probable however, that the
difference practically was not very great. As most skippers in
those days held one or more shares in the ship they commanded,
the captain was rarely of a nationality different from that of the
majority of its owners.
Still a certain number of Scottish ships escaped the payment
of the duty. Scottish skippers could be admitted to the freedom
of the city of Veere, and so acquired the freedom of the ankerage-
geld. There have been years when not a single ship paid this
duty at Veere, although many must have arrived at this port.
In 1660, for instance, it is noted in the account that no anchor
duty was received in the last named port, ' all the Scottish skippers
arriving at Veere declaring themselves citizens of this town.'
What were the conditions required to obtain the freedom of this
city, whether the line of conduct of its magistrates was always the
same, and whether the freedom of Veere exempted the skippers
who had acquired it also from payment at Middelburg and
Flushing, are things still to be investigated. It seems probable
that the magistrates of Veere became more liberal as the custom
of frequenting other Dutch ports became stronger.
It must be remembered, furthermore, that the accounts do not
mention the Scottish goods carried to Zeeland in Dutch bottoms.
According to Rooseboom l this had been prohibited by the Privy
Council of Scotland in 1617. This resolution cannot, however,
have been long in force, or must have been neglected openly.
In the account of the conservator of the Staple from i62y2 we
find an entry : * resavit for guids comit into sundrie dutch
busses L-4/8.' And since 1649 ^ was certainly allowed, as a
1Page 156. 2 Rooseboom, Appendix, 119.
4 Relations between Scotland and Netherlands
resolution (of the Convention of the Burghs ?) of that year l per-
mitted expressly, to use foreign ships for the exportation of
Staple wares, provided security was given that these goods were
transported to the Staple Port.
I do not pretend to have answered all questions which may
offer themselves to the student, who uses these accounts as a
source for the history of commerce. Probably there remains
more than one problem to be solved. It might, for instance,
prove of interest to establish a careful comparison between the
only account still extant of the conservator of the Staple 2 and
the accounts of the waterbaljuw of these years, 1626-27. By
comparing the two documents I was surprised to find that, while
the entries in both accounts are fairly the same in 1626, there
are a great many differences in the following year. Nearly half
of the vessels which, according to the conservator, entered one of
the three ports of Walcheren, are omitted from the accounts of
the waterbaljuw. I cannot explain this.3 But whatever be the
result of later investigations, it is clear that the accounts of the
waterbaljuw contain vast and valuable material for the student of
the history of commerce, and with an eye to the preponderant
place that the intercourse with the Netherlands has taken in the
commercial history of Scotland ; I think I am justified in
specially calling the attention of Scottish scholars to this too little
known mass of documents.
S. VAN BRAKEL.
Utrecht, Holland.
1 Ibid. No. 148, 2nd article.
2 The above-mentioned document, printed by Rooseboom under No. 1 19.
8 It is the more surprising as the administration of the waterbaljuw was
evidently kept with more care than the conservator bestowed on his.
Bellenden's Translation of the History of
Hector Boece
HECTOR BOECE, first Principal of the University of
Aberdeen, is remembered as a Latin author, as the writer
of a History of Scotland which, however inaccurate, commanded
the attention of the scholars of the Renaissance.
It was in vain that Leland, resenting the long line of mythical
kings adopted by Boece, declared his lies to be as innumerable
as the waves of the sea or the stars of the sky. Much later,
Scotsmen, according to Lord Hailes, though reformed from
popery, were not reformed from Boece : even Dr. Johnson,
while admitting his ' fabulousness and credulity,' applauded the
* elegance and vigour ' of his history.
But the work of Boece has a further claim to attention, which
has been well expressed by Professor Hume Brown : l
* Boece's History is memorable for another reason besides its
wide currency and its audacious fictions : it gave occasion to the
first book in Scottish prose which has come down to us. At the
instance of James V., who thus followed the example of other
princes of the renascence, it was translated into Scots (1536) by
John Bellenden, archdeacon of Moray, one of the many versifiers
who haunted the court. Bellenden proved an admirable trans-
later — his flowing and picturesque style doing full justice to his
original, while he added so much in Boece's own manner that
he further adapted it to the tastes of the time.'
The claim of this Scottish version of Boece to be * the first
book in Scottish prose which has come down to us ' might
perhaps be disputed. But assuredly it is the first book of any
great literary value or interest : as a monument of noble Scottish
prose it has never been surpassed : and it would probably be
difficult to exaggerate the influence which both Latin original
and Scottish translation have had upon the national feeling of
Scotland.
1 Cambridge History of English Literature, iii. 156.
6 4 Bellenden's Translation of the
The Scotorum Historic of Boece had been printed in Paris in
1526-7 ; it was some ten years later that the Scottish translation
was issued from the press of Thomas Davidson 1 in a magnificent
quarto. In the colophon, this work is described as compiled by
Boece and lately translated by Bellenden, but at the beginning it
is described as :
* compilit and newly correckit be the reuerend and noble clerke
maister Hector Boece . . . Translatit laitly be maister Johne
Bellenden.'
This description is regrettably vague and ambiguous. But if
the translation was ' correckit ' by the author, it is at least possible
that he was responsible for the additions, and he may have
corrected the style of his translator. Yet the whole credit of the
translation, and of the numerous additions and alterations whereby
the translation differs from the Latin original, has always, so far
as we know, been given solely to John Bellenden : and this from
the earliest times.
Thus, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, William
Harrison wrote :
' How excellently, if you consider the arte, Boethius hath
penned ... his Historic in the Latin, the skilful are not
ignorant : but how profitably and compendiously John Bellenden,
Archdeacon of Murrey, his interpretour, hath turned him from
the Latin into the Scottish tongue, there are verie fewe English
men that know, bycause we want the bookes.'
We have seen that Dr. Hume Brown believed that the
additions found first in the Scottish translation, although 'so
much in Boece's own manner ' were due, not to the revising pen
of Boece, but to the translator.
There is indeed a natural tendency to suppose that a prominent
scholar of the early sixteenth century must have scorned the
vernacular. ' Major and Boece,' says Mr. Anderson, ' wrote in
Latin : being scholars of the sixteenth century, they would not
write in any other language.'2
Yet More and Colet, Fisher and Skelton suffice to prove that
the vernacular was not necessarily despised by scholars ; it is
difficult to decide whether the numerous additions and alterations
which characterize the Scottish translation should rank as the
JThe book unfortunately bears no date, and is sometimes attributed to as late
a year as i 541.
2 Studies in the History of the University of Aberdeen, 1906, p. 29.
History of Hector Boece 7
work of the translator, or were made when the translation was
' newly correckit ' by Boece himself.
Now when the old printed copy of 1536 was reprinted in
1821-2, the editor, Thomas Maitland (later Lord Dundrennan),
called attention to a manuscript of the translation in the library of
Auchinleck. This was known to differ in one or two important
particulars from the printed copy, but the editor unfortunately
had no opportunity of collating it, though some information about
it was supplied to him by Sir Alexander Boswell.
The Auchinleck MS. has now passed into the library of
University College, London. The following facts about it are
significant :
(1) It contains a dedication to James V., dated ' the last day
of August the 3eir of God ane thowsand five hundreth and thretty
ane 3eris.' The MS. accordingly represents a translation pre-
pared, and presumably issued in manuscript, a good many years
before the printed copy ' newly correckit be the reuerend . . .
Hector Boece ' was issued.
(2) The Auchinleck MS. makes no mention of Boece's cor-
rection. Its title runs :
' Heir begynnis the cornikyllis [sic] of Scotland, compylit be
the reuerend clerk maister Hector Boece, and translatit in oure
commoun langaige be maister Jhone Ballentyne . . .'
(3) The Auchinleck MS. differs materially from the translation
as printed some half dozen years later. Many of the passages
which were added to the printed translation are found to be
wanting in the Auchinleck MS. The Auchinleck MS. fre-
quently adheres to the Latin text in places where the translation,
as printed later, departs from it. A close comparison shows that
almost every sentence of the printed translation * newly correckit
be maister Hector Boece ' differs from the earlier translation as
preserved in the Auchinleck MS. In some instances, too, when
the translation in the Auchinleck MS. removes personal r fer-
ences of Boece, these are reinserted in the * correckit ' printed
text. For instance :
(#) Boece, in his Latin text, expressed his indebtedness to the
University of Paris as well as to that of Aberdeen. The passage
was omitted by Bellenden in his translation of 1531, presumably as
being merely personal : but it is reinstated in the printed revision :
This nobil vniuersite [of Paris] (that is sa worthy to be louit in euery
warld) suld be honorit be ws, for thoucht we studiit sum part in Aberden,
8 Bellenden's Translation of the
we tuk our first erudition in this foresaid vniuersite of Paris, and thairfore
we wyl haif na les reuerence and luf to it, than the barn hes to his natiue
moder.1
(£) In the Latin text Boece mentions how he procured some
amber. The passage does not occur in the Auchinleck MS., but
in the printed translation it runs :
Als sone as I wes aduertist thairof, I maid sic deligence, that ane part
of it wes brocht to me at Abirdene. (There is no mention of Aberdeen in
the Latin.)
Omissions are made which seem to imply an authority over
the translation which only the original author would have assumed.
Boece limits the use of the word ' Britain,' * British ' to South
Britain, using ' Albion ' for the whole island. At the same time
he inserts into his History, verbatim, certain passages from
Tacitus in which Britannia is used with reference to North
Britain. This discrepancy worried Bellenden, who inserts the
following note into his translation :
Verba translatoris. Becaus the compilar of thir cornykillis makes ane
gret difference betwix Albioun and Britane throw all the process of his
buke, I haue translatit the wordes in the said orisonis according to that
samyn difference, putting for Britonis Albianis, for Britaine Albioun ;
uther wais the wordes of the saide orisonis myght haue generit gret errour
to the rederss.2
In the printed translation this note is cancelled, and the reviser
deals with the problem as he thinks fit, altering in certain places
Bellenden's Albioun to Britane, Albianis to Britonis. It is difficult
to see why Bellenden should have removed the note he thought
it necessary to insert : it is easy to see why Boece may have
thought it pedantic and superfluous.
In the Dedication to the King, Bellenden had apologized for
his translation, which he had undertaken at the King's command :
And thoth the charge wes importable throw tediuss Laubour and feir of
this huge volume, quhilk hes Impeschit my feble engyne, havand na
crafty wit nor pregnant eloquence to decore the samyn, 5it I am constraint
for schort tyme to bring this my translatioun to lycht, nakit of all per-
fectioun and rethory, as Inplume birdis til flytht; nought the les I lawlie
beseik thi magnificence to accept my Laubour with sik beniuolence as thai
bene dedicat to thi grace.
This passage is omitted in the printed revision, presumably
because such an apology is no longer called for, when the trans-
lation has been revised. Bellenden's Dedication to the King is
1 Book X. cap. 4, end. 2 Bk. IV. cap. 21.
History of Hector Boece 9
removed from its place at the beginning, and put at the end of
the printed volume : a liberty towards the translator which is
more intelligible if it be the work of the original author.
But it would probably be rash to suppose that all the differ-
ences between the Auchinleck MS. and the printed text are due
to the correcting pen of Hector Boece himself. The fact that
Bellenden's own verse * Proheme ' has undergone correction,
suggests that translator as well as author had a share in the
revision, and this is supported by certain entries in the Treasurer's
accounts :
1531. Oct. 4. To Maister John Ballentyne, be the Kingis precept, for
his translating of the Croniclis £30. . . .
1533. July 26. To Meister Johne Ballantyne for ane new Cronikle
gevin to the Kingis Grace j£i2.
Since the epistle dedicatory to the King in the Auchinleck MS.
is dated, as we have seen, Aug. 31, 1531, it seems likely that the
book was presented to the King between that date and Oct. 4,
when Bellenden received his reward : and that in July, 1533, he
presented a revised edition : ' ane new Cronikle.' In that case
the great bulk of the additions may have been made, not by Boece,
but by Bellenden himself between 1531 and 1533. Already,
even in the Auchinleck MS., there are long passages inserted
which are not in the original Latin, and are therefore presumably
the work of Bellenden : chief among these are the animadversions
upon the excessive liberality of King David to the clergy, with
the saying of King James I. that he was ' ane sore sanct for
the croun,'1 and a very interesting passage about the family of
Douglas. Boece had recorded the downfall of this family without
any expressions of sympathy : and had stated that they had in
some measure brought their misfortunes upon themselves.2
Bellenden had been an adherent of the Douglas family : and he
bears bold testimony to their merits :
Of this James discendit the illuster surname off Dowglass, quhilk wer
ever the sickir targe and weirwall of Scotland aganis Inglismen, and wan
never landis in it hot be thair singular manheid and wassalaige. It is said
in the Brucis Buke,
Sa mony gud as of the Dowglass hes bene
Of ane surname wes never in Scotland sene.
Nought the less thai increseit sa gret sone efter, that thair hitht and gret
*Bk. XII. cap. 1 6.
8 Douglas insignis familia . . . sui sibi exitii nonnulla ex parte in causa fuerit
(fol. cccxi).
io Bellenden's Translation of the
pussance bayth in manrent and landis wes sa suspect to the kinges quhilkes
succedit efter thame, that it was the causs of thair declinatioun. It is said,
sen that surname wes put done Scotland did never ane vai^eant deid one
Ingland.1
These additions are, then, presumably the work of Bellenden
himself, since they are found in the Auchinleck MS., which
makes no allusion to any revision by Boece. But if Bellenden
was capable of making them, there is no intrinsic impossibility
in his having been partly or even mainly responsible for the
numerous additions which we find for the first time in the
printed copy as ' newly correckit ' by Boece himself. Such
additions are the story of the White Hart which attacked
David I. while hunting,2 and the anecdotes about the nickname
and the wounds of Archibald, Earl of Douglas.3
The printed copy differs from the Auchinleck MS. in certain
alterations of names or facts. For example, the Sir Hugh
Cressingham who fell at Stirling is called Cassingauiensis in
Boece's Latin, and Cassingham in the Auchinleck MS. : the
name appears in the printed revision in the more usual form
Cressinghame.* In Boece's Latin, Bruce, after his flight from
England, comes to Lochmaben, where he meets fratrem Dauidem
cum Roberto Flemein. This is followed by Bellenden in the MS.
'Dauid Bruse and Dauid [sic] Flemyn.' But in the printed
revision it is corrected : Bruce came
to Lochmaben, quhare he met his brothir Edward, quhilk had gret meruel
of his haiste cummyng.5
This correction is evidently based upon Barbour: 6
Cummyn till Louchmaban ar thai.
Hys brodyr Eduuard thar thai fand
That thocht ferly, Ic tak on hand
That thai come hame sa priuely.
Some of the most noteworthy alterations made in the trans-
lation relate to Bruce and Wallace. The printed translation
differs from both the Latin and the Auchinleck MS. in excusing
the early career of Robert Bruce : was not Saint Paul in his
youth ' ane gret scourge of crystyn pepyll ' ? A comparison in
parallel columns is instructive :
1 Bk. XIV. cap. 8. *Bk. XII. cap. 16.
3Bk. XVI. cap. 14. 4Bk. XIV. cap. 4.
5Bk. XIV. cap. 7. «Bk. II. 1. 1 8.
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1 4 Bellenden's Translation of the
A growing tendency towards advanced ideas in religion can
be noticed. Following the Latin, the Auchinleck MS. says of
S. Gilbert :
mony sindry miraclis ar daylie kythit be him to our dais : his body
lyis in Ross haldin amang the peple in gret veneratioun.1
The later printed translation limits itself to the more cautious
statement :
His body lyis in Ros, haldin in gret veneration of pepyll.2
The references to the friars become increasingly hostile.
Boethius, in his Latin, had recorded how, at a General Council,
the formation of any new order of friars (beyond the recognized
four) was forbidden :
ne populo nouae religionis titulo imponentes, alienis viuant ociosi
laboribus.3
The Auchinleck MS. translates this (somewhat unkindly)
that
na man suld attempt to begyn ony new gise of sic vane superstitionis,
desiring to leif in ydilnes apone the frutis of vther mennis lauboures.
But the printed edition becomes much more violent :
And generall edict maid, that na man suld attempt to begyn ony new
gyse of sic vane superstitious pepyll, quhilkis ar set to eschew labouris,
that thai may leif in lust and ydilnes apon the frutis of othir mennis
handis.4
To sum up : Bellenden's Boece is extant in two versions. The
first, best represented by the Auchinleck MS., shows the form in
which the translation was presented to the King in 1531.
The second version, contained in the printed edition of c. 1536,
differs in almost every sentence from this earlier version. It
claims to be * newly correckit ' by Boece himself, and some of the
corrections seem indisputably to proceed from him. On the
other hand, the fact that the verse c proheme,' avowedly written
by Bellenden himself, has also undergone correction, as compared
with its earlier draft in the Auchinleck MS., suggests that
Bellenden had a hand in the revision of his work : and this is
confirmed by the fact that he seems to have been rewarded by
the King for the presentation of a revised translation. It may be
further noted that the revision of Boece was not so thorough as
1 Bk. XIII. cap. 15. *Fol. clxxxxix. col. i.
8Fol. ccci. b. *Bk. XIII. cap. 21.
History of Hector Boece 15
to prevent some gross mistranslations (first found in the Auchin-
leck MS.) from persisting into the printed edition.1
Bellenden's Boece is one of the two or three most noteworthy
examples of the noble Scottish prose of the sixteenth century,
not yet contaminated by the influence of Southern English ; and
it is most desirable that a modern edition should be forthcoming,
giving the text both in the original and the revised form. The
Scottish Text Society has printed an elaborate edition of
Bellenden's Livy, though the editor admits that this work 'in
point of general interest falls far short ' of the Boece.
Both versions of Bellenden's Boece should be made as accessible
as, thanks to Dr. Craigie and the Scottish Text Society, Bellenden's
Uv? now is' R. W. CHAMBERS.
WALTER W. SETON.
1 Compare for example Latin text fol. cccvii. with Book XV. cap. 5, of the
Scotch version, where the statement that Wallace deserted John Stewart is a
mistranslation.
The Orkney Townships
I.
THE earliest extant Rentals of Orkney (1492 and 1502-03)
show all the lands throughout the isles arranged first into
parishes, and then, under each parish heading, divided into certain
named parcels. Thus under c Parochia de Deirnes ' one finds
' Sanday iii d terre . . . Holland iii d and iii farding terre . . .
Brabustare ane uris terre,' etc.; each followed by a detailed
statement of its duties, and, if there was any land pro rege, of
the rents. These divisions — Sanday, Holland, etc. — were the
c towns ' or ' townships,' once divided from one another and from
the commonty by dykes — high ramparts of turf — and still known
as distinct districts to-day. Within the dykes were all the houses,
all the arable lands, and most of the meadows ; saving only
certain outlying lands called £quoys,' cultivated at a later date —
though many of them were old enough at the time of the first
rentals.
The houses in each town varied in number and the lands
varied greatly in extent ; the extent of the lands being indicated
originally by the number of pennylands in the town. In the
instance quoted above we get a 3 pennyland, a 3^ pennyland
(this odd number is accounted for by part of the town being
bishopric and kirkland, and so not entered in the king's rental),
and an urisland, or 18 pennyland. But long before 1492 the
pennylands had come to vary very much in value and the merk-
land was the true test ; so that one finds pennylands with only
§ of a merk in them and others with 8 or 12 merks. These,
however, were extremes, and the rough general rule in the seven-
teenth century was supposed to be four merks to a pennyland in
the Mainland and South Isles and one merk per pennyland in the
North Isles.
More or less corresponding divisions of the land are found
everywhere, and the word * villa,' i.e. town or township, was a
kind of standard term ; but an exact analogy to the Orkney
The Orkney Townships 17
townships I have been unable to discover. Indeed, they may
fairly be said to be the most characteristic and (together with the
winds) the most permanent feature of the islands. Yet though
they persist as distinct entities and retain certain traditions, the last
sixty or eighty years have wrought devasting changes within their
dykes. In some cases all traces of the past have been swept away
by their conversion into a single large modernised farm ; in all,
the multitude of old terms and old customs have been mostly
forgotten.
Fortunately, however, a great many records survive in the
shape of ' perambulations,' ' divisions,' and * plankings,' dating as
a rule from the seventeenth century ; though both the sixteenth
and the eighteenth are represented. Most of these were found
scattered through myriads of odd bundles of papers in the Sheriff
Court House at Kirkwall, and in this paper where no footnote
reference is given the document quoted always came from that
collection. Various private collections yielded treasure trove also,
and here and there through charters and sasines odd bits of infor-
mation cropped up. It has thus been possible to piece together
a fairly complete picture of the old Orkney towns. One or two
points still remain obscure, yet the general principles emerge from
the accumulation of evidence pretty distinctly.
The first differentiation of township lands to be noted is the
distinction indicated in the very earliest of these documents, a
division of the town of Thurrigair in South Ronaldsay on
October iyth, I5O8.1 The point to be settled was ' the decerning
and devyding of inskyftis^ touneland, and owtchistis pertening to the
fyff d. land of the Trinite Stuk and ane d. land pertening to the
said David and his aris ' (the whole town being a 6d. land). The
inquest examined and testified to ' ilk penny land inskyft and
towmal be itself of the 5d. land, and then found that the
c thowmalis and inskyft of the pennyland pertening to the said
David and his aris beginnys and extendis . . . ' (boundaries are
given). They ordained that David and his heirs were ' to bruk
his fowma/is, as weil with outpastor as with inpastour, extendand
to the hille, within the dyk and without the dyk.'
Of these terms, owtchistis is never met again, but it may perhaps
refer to this inpasture and outpasture extending to the hill.
c Inskyft,' however, is actually defined (by implication, at least)
in a couple of contemporary dooms of court. In one of these,
dempt in 1519, occurs this passage: 'be ressoun that the nyne
1 R.E.O., (Records of the Earldom of Orkney), No. xxxvii. A.
B
1 8 J. Storer Clouston
penny land of Saba and fredome thairof lyis within ane
ainisskopft within it selfF, and nather the nichtbouris of Thoep nor
na utheris lyis in curig (sic") nor rendall, girse pairt nor wair
pairt, nor ony other pairting of fredomes within ony parsoneis
bot onlie within thameseluis, etc.'1 And in a dome of 1509,
giving an earlier decision to precisely the same effect concerning
the same lands, an abbreviated version of this passage runs :
1 be resone that the ix penne land of Saba lyis in ane inskeyft
within hyttself in lentt and breyd,' etc.2 Whether £ curig ' be
simply an error for runrig or not, there is no doubt anyhow
about the standard Scottish term < rendall ' for runrig land, and
we see that an inskyft was a parcel of land not lying in runrig
with other lands but belonging solely to one owner.
There are various other references to inskyfts, none of them
contradictory to this and at least two of them confirming it. In
an undated complaint by Alexander Louttit in Mirbister against
his nephew James Louttit (evidently soon after i6oo),s Alexander
states c that quair the said James hes his emkiftis lyand within the
toun of Mirbister occupyed be him and the ane half of the dyks
biget and posesd and uphaldin be me, and thereby the said
James aucht and schould big and uphald the ane half of the dykis
of Browllskethe quhilk is my enskifcis, as weil as I uphald the
dykis of his enskiftisj etc. Here again we have the inskiftis as
personal and individual parts of the township, very much larger than
mere rigs. The difficulty as to the upkeep of the dykes evidently
implies that each man was responsible for a certain considerable
stretch, which would occasionally include a neighbour's inskift.
Another instance occurs in a letter of ist September, 1677,
from James Louttit of Mirbister, bailie of Harray, to Arthur
Baikie of Tankerness, Steward Depute of Orkney, from which it
appears that a certain John Hervie was ' troubling ' three of
Baikie's tenants in the town of Grimeston, * and promises to
enter in their inskift land, quhilk belongis to yorself, George
Ritchie, and Breknes, and pairtlie to themselfis, and thinkis to
bost them with that law borrowis, quhilk he hes for veritie (i.e.
has taken out as a matter of fact) to get possessione in that land
and grass, he haveing his awin inskiftis be himself.' In this case
it will be noted that the inskift consisted of a mixture of arable
land and grass, and further evidence that this was usually the case
is to be seen in a sasine of land in Mirbister, 5th September,
1 R.E.O. No. xli., where it is printed ' amisskopft.'
1 Ibid. No. xxxvii. » Skaill Charters.
The Orkney Townships 19
I643,1 where the purchaser gets ' 9 riggs or spelds called Quoyna-
brenda ' in satisfaction of all that he wanted of the grass of his
inskiftis.
Some years ago, before all this evidence had been collected,
the late Prof. Jakobsen suggested to the writer engja-skipti, a
division of meadow land, as the probable origin of inskift ; but
this clearly cannot be the case, and it would seem in all likelihood to
be derived from einskipti, a single or sole division (though this actual
combination of ein and skipti is not in the Icelandic dictionary).
Coming to ' towmalls ' and ' townland,' a very interesting per-
ambulation of the town of Paplay in South Ronaldsay in 1677
throws light on this question.2 Paplay was a yd. land, and the
inquest began by dealing with the towmalls of each of the nine
pennylands in turn. Here are a few examples :
(Number one pennyland.) ' The peney land towmell or hill
back of Lalley, hawing the uppa or beginning of the towne, we
left heall (whole) as formerlie, belonging to Hellin Stewart,
Captone Peither Winsister her husband for his entres, and
Allexander Stewart of Masseter.'
(Number two.) l The peney land of Birstone we have devydit
in twa, the one halff, being the uppa or caster back of the said
peney land, to Johne Birstone and his perteners, and the wester
halff peney land back to James Kynnard of Burwick.'
(Number six.) ' The nixt peney land thereto called Straittie
towmell, devydit also in twa to Archibald Stewart of Burray,
Alexr Flait of Grwtha, and their perteners.'
(Number seven.) ' The peney land of Hootoft devydit in
mener efter specifit ; fyw (five) rigis from the easting to Allexr
Fflait of Grwtha for the towmell or hill balk of ane farding there
pertening to him. The uther twa fardings thereof pertening to
Hellin Stewart and her husband for his intres and Allexr Stewart
forsaid and ane farding to James Kynnard of Burwick, which
three fardings towmell or hill balk is to contenue in rig rendell for
this yer as formerlie, allowing the said Hellin Stewart and Allexr
Stewart forsaid, the uppa and ulla for their halff peney land or
twa farding thereof, and the said James Kynnard the midla or
midmest rig for his ane farding towmell thereof.'
After dealing with all the nine separate pennylands in this
fashion the deed runs : ' Wee went lykways on the townesland,
and we found the peney land of Laley to have the first rig of the
towne, and the second rige to the peneyland of Birstone, and swa
1 Reg. Sasines, vol. 6, fol. 271. * Heddle of Cletts Charters.
20 J. Storer Clouston
fwrth to ewerie heritor conform to their proportione in ewerie
each peneyland.'
A vast deal of curious information is buried in this deed.
Unearthing it, we find in the first place a clear distinction between
the towmalls or lands set apart to the proprietors of the various
pennylands, and the townlands which went rig about to all the
pennylands. We find one towmall had previously been in rig
rendall and was to continue so for the rest of that year, but
evidently, by implication, was then to be divided into solid slices
among the proprietors. What is very extraordinary and quite
peculiar to this town, we also find that the hill backs or balks,
usually strips of waste ground or rough pasture above the arable,
were identical with the towmalls ; the towmalls elsewhere being
even to this day remembered, and in some cases pointed out, as
small fields close to the houses in the best parts of the arable land
(the word is always pronounced c tumult ' to-day). As will be
seen later, many houses were built on hill backs — though not the
chief houses, but here we get all the houses perched up at the top
of the town, and as a matter of fact there they still stand to-day,
the name of each of the old pennylands being borne by a farm.1
The ' uppa ' will be met with frequently again, and in the
meantime it need only be noted that it was associated with the
idea of the beginning (in geographical order) of the town and that
the first rig of the rendall lands accompanied it. At the other
end was the ' ulla ' (often found in the form ' nulla,' ' nullay,' or
c nurley '), and ' midla ' meant the middle when there were three.
With larger numbers, however, one only finds the ' uppa ' and
' ulla ' applied to the first and last rigs, those between being
simply called ' second,' f third,' etc.
Another South Ronaldsay deed, still further illustrating several
of the same points, is the division of the 3d. land of Uray (a semi-
township forming part of some larger town — probably Holland),
made on 23rd March, 1642. The inquest * devydit the haill
south town in thrie thirds, quhairof the ane peny land called
Flaws has the uppa, Hollandis pennyland has the midrig, and
the pennyland called Coulls has the nulay. And ordains all
within the saids merchis as they rin to be devydit also in thrie
thirds be coulter and sock (i.e., by plough), alsweill tounland as
towmale land, being maid all tounland' This means that the
whole town was thrown into the melting pot, the towmale land
1 With one or two exceptions, where other names appear instead of the penny
land names. There is just one farm, however, for each of the penny lands.
The Orkney Townships 21
being made for this purpose into townland or rendall land. No
doubt fresh towmalls would then be laid out for the various
houses. As will appear from other instances, this re-rendalling of
the whole town seemed to be the standard cure for all ills.
From these instances there can be no doubt what the town-
land was, namely, all the land lying in rig rendall or runrig and
shared by the whole town.1 In contradistinction, the towmalls
were the portions set apart for the exclusive use of the respective
houses to which they were attached. A common error that has
crept into more than one work in which they are referred to, is
that they consisted of grass only. This is amply disproved by one
set of facts alone : — the rents of various towmalls in the 1 502-3
and 1595 Rentals, which were invariably to be paid either in malt
or bear, are conclusive evidence that they were arable land.
And various other references to the rigs of which towmalls were
composed confirm this. We have seen one instance in Paplay,
but a still more conclusive bit of evidence is afforded by an
inquest on the laws of Swartaquoy in Holm, 2oth February,
1678. The inquest found 'the said John Voy to be wronged
and predjudged be the said Nicoll Talzeor in the towmall
underneath the said Nicoll his hous in the third part of two
riges, quhilks two riges are at the neather end 30 foot in breadth
and at the upper end 33 foot, quhilk the said seven men has
esteemed and valued, and esteems and values the growth thereof
to be zeirlie communibus annis worth ane settin of malt.' It may
be added that the reason why John Voy had a share of the tow-
mall beneath Nicol Taylor's house evidently was that the land
concerned was a certain halfpenny land within the town of
Swartaquoy which would appear to have formed a farm divided
between these two men.
Turning back to the division of Thurrigair in 1508, it will
be remembered that the towmalls and inskift of one specific
pennyland had their boundaries defined, while the townland, one
now knows, went in runrig with the other pennylands. The
question arises ; was the inskift composed of the towmalls, or
was it a slice of non-runrig land apart from the towmalls ?
There seems to be no evidence to answer this question definitely,
1 Since this paper was written, a deed has come into possession of the author
(through the courtesy of Mr. J. W. Cursiter) illustrating particularly clearly
various of the points dealt with. It is a perambulation of North Wideford in
St. Ola parish, 23rd February, 1686. The phrase 'townland or rendall land'
occurs several times, in specific distinction to the towmall lands.
22 J. Storer Clouston
but it will be seen later that though all the townland was rendall
land in theory, it was held to some extent in 'planks' or whole
fields for the sake of obvious convenience, and it is possible that
the term inskift referred to these. In fact one or two references
point distinctly to this being the likelier solution and suggest that
it was used pretty loosely and generally of any parcel of land
(larger than a rig) not shared with other heritors in the town.
Such parts of the town and such rights connected with it as
were the exclusive property of one proprietor are constantly
referred to as his ' freedoms,' in exactly the same sense in which
' liberties ' was once used. His towmall or towmalls is one
instance, and another continually met with is his ' house
freedoms,' a term which evidently covered all the ground
necessary for his house, farm buildings, and corn, kaill and stack
yards. A division of the town of Corrigall in Harray on
1 5th April, 1 60 1,1 between James, Robert, and John Corrigall refers
to an earlier decree of 1572, ' decerning James and Robert
Corigilles to have thair entres and house fredomes on the wast
syed off thair houssis, with barne or corneyaird, and siclyik
ordening John Corrigill to h.ave his entres and house-fredomes
on the eist syed of his hous,' an arrangement apparently implying
a group of buildings (a mansion or large manor farm divided up
among the family) with ' freedoms ' stretching on both sides.
And there are various other instances of the same sort of thing.
The most curiously minute and detailed case is the decree in
favour of James Beaton of Pow of his ' right to the twelth pairt of
the saids housses and biggings of Clouk (in the town of Inner
Stromness) quich twelth aggries with his interest of land, being
ane halfe penney land there.' The date of the decree is i8th
February, 1679, and the deed quoted in it, and now ratified, is a
division of the houses of Clouk between Marion and William
Beaton dated 1566, the consequence being that James Beaton's
* twelth pairt ' was in a sadly delapidated condition after the lapse
of a hundred and thirteen years, and, indeed, had partially
vanished. What his predecessors had set apart to them is thus
described: — * The innermost pairt of the fyre house and two
sellars (rooms) nixt thereto, quich wes possesd be umquhile
William Beatton, father to the said James ffiftie yeires since,
and of the quhilks two sellars there is ane alltogether and the
other almost ruinous ; and that umquhile William Beatton father
to the said James hade his kaill yaird pertening to his halfe
1 R. E. O. No. Ixxx.
The Orkney Townships 23
penney land in the northmost pairte of the corneyaird of Clouk
now quere the steith (steeth or foundations) of the dyck thereof
is yet extant ; and nixt thereto westward stood the said umquhile
William Beatton his barne, killne and stables which is since taken
down and turned into ane kaill yaird ; and that the said umquhile
William Beatton his byre wes on the west syde of the new
chamber of Clouk which is now made in ane long barne ; and
that the said umquhile William Beatton his cornes of the said
halfe penney land stood in the corne yaird of Clouk, but the
saids witnesses could not condescend on any particular place.'
So that all the heir of the said umquhile William Beatton seems to
have recovered of his patrimony was the ruins of one room, the
steeth of his kaill yaird dyke, and a few general directions where to
look for the sites of the rest. Nevertheless, he had recovered his
* house freedoms ' and was no doubt as happy as a successful
litigant deserves to be.
No term is more constantly used in connection with these old
township lands than £ hill back ' or * hill balk.' Its general
meaning as a strip of waste ground or hill pasture outside the
arable and good meadow land has already been referred to, and
with the exception of Paplay where they were identical with the
towmalls, the hill backs are found in all recorded cases as such
outside strips.1 The fullest and most minute account we have of
them is contained in a perambulation of the town of Clouston in
Stenness on the last day of February, 1681. First, the inquest
took the declaration of the heritors ' anent the mairches of the
uppa balk, beginning at the entrie of the little burne at the loch
within the picka dyke, and up throw Quoy Anna following the
old balk to the turne of the picka dyke at the grip or little burne
of the Fidges, containing nyne faddomes to each two fardings
balk.' With the same particularity the course of the balks is
traced right round the town and back to the loch shore at the
other end of it, three of the farms being mentioned as points at
which balks began or ended. Clouston was a six pennyland and
one finds six balks or long strips of heather or rough pasture
stretched end to end round three sides of the township (the
fourth side being the loch shore where the best old arable land
still lies), filling the space between the uppermost houses and
the ' picka dyke.' Each of these six long balks was divided into
two sections (i.e., by a cross division), and each section was then
1 Another similar exception has since turned up in the case of North Wideford.
(See foot-note p. 21.)
24 J. Storer Clouston
split into a series of small balks given to the various farms in
rotation.
Nothing is more striking in the large assortment of deeds
dealing with township divisions than the variety of these divisions
in all matters of detail. The broad distinction between rendall
lands, meadows, towmalls, and (except in Paplay) hill balks is
common to all, but one can never take a detailed account of what
happened in one town as applicable in all points to all towns.
For instance, the principle of laying one balk to each pennyland
was acted on in each of the very few cases in which we have an exact
record of how balks were apportioned, but there is no proof that
this was followed by the subdividing that took place in Clouston.
It is certainly not mentioned in the records.
Sometimes backs or balks were cultivated and became outlying
parts of the town arable lands, for the crop of a certain balk in
the town of Onston in Stenness is mentioned in a bailie court
decree of I576,1 and one may pretty confidently assume that this
had been the history of the ' towmalls or hill balks ' in Paplay.
No doubt they were simply cultivated balks.
Closely connected with the question of balks is that of the
* out freedoms.' The best record connected with them is con-
tained in the perambulation of the town of Kirbister in Orphir in
1694. That part of the verdict begins : — 'After considering of
the out friedomes of the said Toun upon the north east side of the
said burne of Kirbister, they (the inquest) all sitting at the said
merchston, fynd that Breiknes haveing the uppa of the rendall
and laboured land ought first to be payed of the out friedom,
which out friedom begins at the loch called the Loch of Ground-
water, and so east and southeastward till he be satisfied and payed
of the fourth part upon the north east side of the said burn.'
The next heritor began where Graham of Breckness stopped, and
all had been ' payed ' by the time the mouth of the burn was
reached ; whereupon they began with a fresh succession of out
freedoms for the rest of the way round the town, till they reached
the Loch of Groundwater again. There were six such sections in
all, each divided among the various proprietors.
The resemblance to the procedure in Clouston is at once
apparent, and as no hill balks are mentioned in the whole peram-
bulation of Kirbister, it would look as though the out freedoms
stood in their stead. They are termed, however, in one
place the c out-dycks,' whereas in Clouston the balks were certainly
1 R. E. O. No. Ixiv.
The Orkney Townships 25
within the dykes, and though Kirbister was only a 3d land,
there were six sections of out freedom. It would seem as though
towns differed as to the proximity of their dykes to the arable,
some having no balk space left ; and in this connection it is
perhaps significant that Kirbister had the exceptionally high
number of 8 merklands to the pennyland, and it rather looks as
though this result had been attained by cultivating every acre out
to the dykes.
It is in connection with township dykes that we come upon
the most mysterious of all these old forgotten terms — the * Auld
Bow.' At first sight Bow seemed manifestly to be the same
word as Bu or, in old deeds, Bull, the chief farm or mansion of
a township, and the Auld Bow simply to be this manor farm as
it had once existed. In fact, in the record of an action concerning
land in the town of Ireland in Stenness, 18 March 161^^ we
find both the Auld Bow and the Bow of Ireland mentioned, the
former meaning apparently the whole arable lands of the town,
and the latter certainly meaning the lands of the ancient ' Head
House ' (now the Hall of Ireland) within it ; but the actual
word ' Bow ' being to all seeming the same word in each case.
Even then it seemed difficult to understand how in the case of
a town containing one of the best preserved old Bus in Orkney,
the term Auld Bow should be used in a somewhat different sense,
but the mystery began to thicken fast as the phrase kept cropping
up in other records.
Here are a few examples of its usage. In a charter of lands
in Quholme in Stromness, 19 January 1 5 84/8 5, 2 mention is
made of a house ' biggit upoun the kingis baik outwith (outside)
the auld bow ' ; the sense clearly being outside the township arable
lands. A precept of 2 Sept. i6o7,3 to the bailie of Harray directs
him to possess Alexander Louttit in his proper part of the balks
of Mirbister, ' conform to the rendall rigs outwith the auld bow ' ;
and here, if the phrase be taken to mean what it seems to mean,
the auld bow was a most circumscribed area, not even including
the rendall lands of the town. In a perambulation of Clouston
in December 1666, the arable lands are first reviewed, and then
the inquest deals with < the backs without the old bow ' ; but in
an earlier part of the record among the ' sheads ' or fields of
arable land enumerated (all of them within this area), we find
4 the 6 rigs lyand within the old bow,' so that in the same deed
1 Sheriff Court Book, Orkney and Zetland, 1612-1630.
*R.E.O., No. clxxxviii. 3Nisthouse charters.
26 j. Storer Clouston
we apparently have the phrase employed in both these senses —
the whole arable land and a circumscribed area. In a paper
headed ' Information for Williame Sinclair of Saba, contra Johne
Craigie,' undated, but evidently in the first half of the seventeenth
century, comes a passage that throws an entirely new light on the
question. Craigie had been accused of illegally extending his
dykes, and ' there was ane inquest led for tryell quhair the steith
of the auld bow stood last.' Here we have the auld bow identified
as a dyke of some sort, and in two more records we again find it
unmistakeably as a dyke. In a division of certain meadows that
lay between the towns of Burness and Whatquoy in Firth,
30 Nov. 1714, it is stated that these meadows were 'interjected
within an old bow betwixt the said lands of Burness and Whatquoy.'
And again in the planking of Inner Stromness in 1765^ mention
is made of the kirkyard ' bow] evidently the dyke round the
kirkyard ; and also the ' bow dyke ' is referred to in another
part of the township.
In every case where an c auld bow ' is mentioned, a dyke would
fill the bill, and if one assumes a dyke round the old arable lands
of the town, within the hill dyke or ' picka dyke,' and in some
cases another round the old Head House or Bu and its * freedoms,'
all the difficulties would be met. And it may be added, in support
of this suggestion, that the old outside dyke of Kirbister (to which,
in this particular case, the town arable lands apparently stretched),
is called to-day the ' bu dyke.' But whether the actual word
* bow ' is simply ' bu ' or ' bull ' in a transferred sense, or whether
it was originally another word altogether, seems a question for
etymological experts.
A very complete and detailed account of the methods and
principles involved in the division of a township among the
heritors is given in the Bishopric Court Book of Orkney, under
date 9 January 1624. The town was the large district of Inner
Stromness, which contained no fewer than 36 pennylands or two
whole Urislands, and the method, briefly summarised, was this.
First it was ordained ' that everie uddaller, tenant, or occupier of
the lands of Inner Stomness posses his hous fredome within the
bow according to his landis, conforme to use or wount.' Then
they ordained 'sex towmales, ane for ilk sex penny land merchit,'
and the boundaries and exact positions of the six towmalls are
laid down, all of them near certain named houses, so that one
could identify the towmalls pretty exactly to-day. All but one
1 Papers of Mr. J. A. S. Brown.
The Orkney Townships 27
half towmall lay in the heart of the town among the best old
arable lands.
Then all the ' sheads ' or fields in the town were taken in
geographical order from east to west, and were generally divided
into six, one-sixth to each sixpenny land, or sometimes into
three for the three sixpenny lands of one of the Urislands. In
the latter case the other Urisland would get the next shead all to
itself. Among the sheads occurred a large meadow which was
* devydid in twa to the twa Urislandis to go about yeirlie.'
Under each shead it was stated where the uppa was to begin,
and in all but one or two exceptional cases it began at the east.
The hill balks and out freedoms were not dealt with on this
occasion.
Another record that gives valuable information about the
apportioning and constitution of towmalls is the perambulation
of Graves in Holm on 14 January I63I.1 In this case only the
* girsland (grassland), towmales, and houses of the 3d land of
Gravis ' were dealt with — not the rendall land. Each 6 farthing
land had its towmall and grass apportioned, and the first 6 farthing
lands share is thus defined : ' that haill plank of girsland quhair-
upon the haill houses of Eister Gravis stands, with the samin
haill houses, togidder with aught riggis of labourit land nixt
adjacent to the said plank, betuix the rendall land and the auld
bow on the southeast and northwest, and the landis of Brecon on
the southwest and northeast, togidder also with the labourit
towmale and houses thairof in Wester Gravis, with the girs
belanging thairto ' (the marches of this last being likewise given).
It will be noted from the boundaries specified that the ' auld bow '
must have been either the grass plank with the houses of Easter
Graves on it, or a dyke bounding this.
II.
The main framework of these old townships is now apparent,
and we come next to the working arrangements of the land.
Taking first the grasslands or meadows, one fact has already
been noted in Inner Stromness, and from several other references
it would appear to have been a general custom ; and that is the
feature of meadows going year about among the proprietors and
tenants of the town. On the other hand, we have seen grass
included in inskifts and going with towmalls, and in these cases
1 Graemeshall charters.
28 J. Storer Clouston
it presumably did not go year about, unless two proprietors shared
a farm.1
A deed that throws a certain amount of light on the holding of
meadows is a decision with regard to Ninian Meason's share of
the rendall and grass lands in the same town of Graves in Holm,
on December 5, 1605. It was printed in the Records of the
Earldom of Orkney, and puzzled the editor considerably, but he
now perceives the drift of it. Meason, owning 3 farthing land in
the 3d land of Graves proper (which, together with Breckan,
made up the 4^d. of Graves, as entered in the Rentals), got a
fourth part of the rendall land. Two out of the three penny
lands had had their grass * drawin off' by the occupiers previously,
and he got his fourth of this. The grass of the third pennyland,
however, required some looking for, and a special inquest was
convened to find it and give him his share. Thus we see that
the various pennylands might or might not have their share of
the meadows specially earmarked, and that according to a man's
proportion of the whole town, he got a proportion of the grass of
each pennyland.
Of the arable land, by far the greater proportion was, as has
already been seen, in run rig among the various heritors. Did
this imply in Orkney, as it did in some places, that the rigs
changed hands every year ? This question, I think, can be
answered decisively. The rigs never changed hands, except
perhaps when the whole town was re-rendalled, and then pro-
bably only to a very small extent. Of the many small pieces of
evidence all to the same effect, another complaint by the ever-
complaining Alexander Louttit in Misbister (undated, but soon
after i6oo)2 gives very specific proof. He says he has a piece
of land lying in run rig with the lands of James Velzian, and for
five years past Velzian has complained that the march stones were
over far in upon his lands, ' albeit my grandshir, guidshir, and
father hes bene in peaceable possession these many years bygane
of the said run rigs.' The run rigs were ' found,' and the march
stones set by an inquest of twelve men. Whereupon the com-
plaint meanders into James Velzian's subsequent misdeeds. Here
we have evidence of march stones dividing the rigs, and of certain
1 A very clear distinction is made in the North Wideford perambulation
between 'common grass friedomes' attached to 'ilk pennyland,' and the 'meadows
of the haill town.' These last ' goe about yeirlie . . . according to the vulgar
country terme called meadow skift.'
2Nisthouse Charters.
The Orkney Townships 29
rigs having been in one family's possession down to the fourth
generation ; and similar proof of division by march stones and of
each man's owning and continuing to own the self-same rigs for
periods of years is to be found in several other deeds ; while .no
suggestion of interchange is ever met with.
At the root of the old run rig system was the idea of fairness,
the giving to each portioner of the township an equitable mixture
of good and bad land, but this was assuredly its only virtue.
Anything more inconvenient, more destructive of all possibility of
agricultural development, and more productive of quarrels and
litigation the wit of man has probably never evolved. Its dis-
advantages, indeed, were so obvious that even in those conserva-
tive days a common-sense solution — or rather a partial solution —
had been discovered. Though theoretically all in run rig, the
town lands were actually held, to some extent, in ' planks ' or
compact parcels. One has no evidence on the point that can
enable one to judge what proportion of the town was usually held
in planks, but there are various references to the custom. Thus
the division of Uray, already noticed, was the result of an action
against certain persons for intruding on ' sundry rigs, planks, and
hill balks.' Again, an entry in the Circuit Court records of South
Ronaldsay for 1683 deals with a charge against a man for 'leading
and takeing away corns to his own barne yaird and uther mens,
under silence of night contrair to the custome and lawes of this
country, his corns lyeing rigg in rendall with uther mens and not
planked.'
A curious instance of the theory of run rig accompanied by the
practice of planking is to be seen in the perambulations of
Clouston in 1666 and on iyth January, 1680. In the first
a heritor, Thomas Omand, who had recently acquired land
amounting to one-ninth of the town, was given the ninth rig
of every nine rigs in every single shead in the town ; which
implies inevitably that every field was held run rig among
all the proprietors. Yet in the second case, further disputes
having arisen, a certain whole shead was adjudged to be the
joint property of two other men, portioners of another farm ;
though this very field was one of those named in 1666. Evi-
dently Thomas Omand got a theoretical collection of ninth rigs
and then adjusted matters with his neighbours on more common
sense lines.
Yet one passage in the verdict of the perambulation of Kirbister
shows that the run rig principle was constantly at work, in the
30 J. Storer Clouston
guise of an angel of justice, undoing all efforts to lift agriculture
out of the rut. ' Because of the great enormities that they have
found quhilk formerly has been committed within the said toun '
the inquest ordain c that the haill arable lands of the toun, as wel
lands which were formerly rendalled as outbreck and planked
lands should of new be rendalled, and that ilk shead of the said
land should have an uppa, and that the samen shall begin at the
east ; or as near thereto as they can.' Thus back went the hands
of the clock every time an inquest descended upon an unfortunate
township.
But though this was the law and the prophets, some of these old
township records show curious exceptional features. In Clouston,
for instance, the 1666 perambulation gives a list of fifty sheads,
each with its name — Tursland, Lindego, Keldebreck, Skeda, and
the rest, almost all forgotten to-day ; but of the sheads that lay
under the old ' Head House ' (which were remembered some
years ago and fortunately preserved) not a single one is included.
Evidently one has here an ' inskift ' inviolate through some old
right or custom, and certain other facts confirm this. There is no
record of how it came about, but in other townships a feature has
already appeared several times, which, one would think, might
readily bring about some such result. And this is the differentia-
tion of the various pennylands that made up the town.
We have seen it in Paplay, in Thurrigair, and in Uray.
Another case is Mirbister in Harray, where in a sasine of 1643,
already quoted, the seller's title is founded on a disposition by the
one time owner of a pennyland in Nether Mirbister, and the land
sold included a half merk udall land of the said pennyland, which
was more particularly specified as the ' third rig of every aucht
rig of the said pennyland.' In other words, it included no part
of the other two pennylands making up the town. And again in
the planking of the town of Netherbrough in Harray in 1787 the
oversman * compared the pennylands as they stood planked.'
But the two most striking cases hail from South Ronaldsay —
the division of two pennylands in the town of Hoxa, I4th March,
1645, anc^ the division of one pennyland in Lythes, 4th January,
1669. In neither case did the pennylands in question form the
whole of the township, but started by being known divisions of
land within it ; and then the inquest set to work in as business-
like a fashion as any modern land surveyor. In Hoxa they began
by dividing ' the hill balkis of the foresaid 2d. land in halferis,
laying fyve scoir nine shaftis to ilk pennyland, the lenth of ilk
The Orkney Townships 31
shaft being seven futtis of ane futt in measure and four inches
mair.' This gave them the width of each pennyland along the
top end. Then they proceeded to divide the north pennyland
* equallie in halferis conforme to the goodness of the land,' setting
up march stones from the c moss and loch ' (which lie in the
middle of Hoxa) to the hill. And finally they divided one of
these halves into four parts by boundary lines running likewise
from the moss and loch to the hill.
In Lythes they cut the one pennyland up into four farthing
lands, each precisely measured. The * southmost and eastmost '
farthing land, for instance, consisted 'at the neather end of 12
shoftlongs (sic] in breidth, each shoftlong containing seven foots
in length, and runs forward to the hill called Sunmyre, and con-
sists of 14 shoft longs of the lyk length in breidth anent the
midla thereof or thereby, and lykwayis consists of 14 shoftlongs
of the said length within the neather end of the quoy and of 16
shoftlongs at the over end of the quoy' (i.e. the farthing land
took in part of a quoy at its upper end). The next two farthings
were of exactly the same dimensions, and the fourth was a little
wider when it reached the quoy. Finally, march stones were set
up at each of the ' said four places in breidth, betwixt ilk farding
land of the said penny land.'
Two conclusions seem to emerge pretty clearly from all these
cases. One is that though this differentiation of the penny
lands, and even of the farthing lands, was not allowed to interfere
with the cherished principle of run-rigism, they certainly modified
it, as, for instance, in the Mirbister case where one pennyland
was run rig, but only within itself, and obviously formed a separate
parcel from the others. And in this connection may be men-
tioned a wadset of I9th June, 1596, by John Voy of 3 farthing
lands ' lying contigue and together ' in the town of Easter Voy.1
The second conclusion is that, contrary to an opinion one has seen
expressed,2 the pennylands must have included everything — grass
lands, arable, and balks right up the hill.
Coming down to the smallest denominations of land within the
township, we find the ' sheads ' and ' rigs ' incessantly referred to
in all manner of documents. The shead (pronounced to-day
' sheed,' but often spelt in the old deeds ' shade ') was simply the
old field, as is specifically indicated by the phrase l shead or field '
occurring several times in the planking of Inner Stromness, and,
1 Skaill Charters.
"What is a Pennyland ? ' Proc. Sac. oj Ant. Scot. April, 1884.
32 ]. Storer Clouston
indeed, it is still remembered by a few in this sense. In the
absence of any system of drainage, one would naturally suppose
that the sheads must have been an irregular and untrimmed
assembly, the land being cultivated where it was dry and left
alone where it was boggy. Yet when one goes through a large
number of these township records, it becomes increasingly clear
that (so long, at least, as there were several portioners in a
town) the fields must have been symmetrical in shape and pre-
sented a more or less ' squared ' appearance, for nothing was more
jealously insisted on than uniformity among the rigs comprising the
shead, both in length and breadth. But even so, I was certainly
not prepared for a very surprising fact disclosed by the report ot
the planking of Netherbrough in Harray, issued 3rd Sept., 1787.
In this report is given not only the number of arable planks
allotted to each heritor, but the names of the sheads in which
these planks lay. Sometimes these sheads would be divided
between two or more proprietors, though generally they went
entire to one, but, whether divided or not, the vast majority of
the sheads consisted exactly of one single plank ; a plank as used
in these Orkney plankings at that time consisting of 40 fathoms
square =1600 square fathoms = i^ English acres approximately
(though there is one mention of an earlier unofficial planking
where the planks were 50 fathoms square). Two or three sheads
consisted of 2 planks, a few of a plank and a fraction ; ^, i-J-|,
and i plank 67 fathoms being the most irregular.
The heritors of Netherbrough were a thorny proposition, one
of them — Magnus Flett of Furso — being a particularly com-
batant gentleman, who considered he was unjustly deprived of
certain four rigs, and swore ' By his God he was going to grip
them again ! ' so that no fewer than three plankings took place
before the dust of conflict settled. Under these circumstances
the long-suffering plankers were driven to the most meticulous
accuracy, and it may be safely taken that this coincidence of
sheads and planks was no mere approximate estimate, especially
as we do find a few odd fractions. There seems, therefore, to be
no getting away from the conclusion that instead of being irre-
gular patches, these old sheads were, with some exceptions, cut to
a precise measure.
As a plank was evidently of whatever size one chose to make
it, it appears to follow that 40 fathoms square was chosen because
that was the size of the Orkney fields. In all the official plankings
this was the size. And there are one or two other bits of evidence
The Orkney Townships 33
confirming this measure as the usual area of a field. In the report
of an action concerning land in Redland in Firth (26th July, 1770)
one witness testified that < the shead of the Irons was among the
best sheads or planks in the town.' In the case of Clouston
50 sheads were named, all but two or three being certainly arable,
and some are known to have been omitted ; and, going by a
planking of 1766, about ten planks may be allowed for these last.
The total arable area was 60 planks odd in 1766, which leaves
roughly 50 planks for nearly 50 sheads, an estimate which is
certainly not very far out, and affords a further bit of confirmation.
It may be mentioned, by the way, that in Netherbrough the total
arable area was 66 planks odd and the number of sheads 64.
In the town of Inner Stromness the sheads were of considerably
larger size, as is proved by a few cases mentioned in the planking
of 1765, but that this was the exception and the other the rule
seems clearly indicated not only by the three cases mentioned, but
by an observation made by the minister of Evie and Kendall,
under date 1797, in the old Statistical Account. He says that even
after the plankings of the old run rig lands, farmers were apt to
hold their farms in scattered patches of ground ' of a plank each '
— evidently scattered sheads or fields, since there could be no
other reason for giving them scattered patches of exactly a plank
each.1
Another interesting fact is that these Netherbrough sheads
were very often evidently divisions of a4arger shead, or anyhow
of a larger area all going under one name. Thus one gets West
Gullow, East Gullow, Chin of Gullow, Gate of Gullow, and
Crown of Gullow (or Crawn a Gullow in another place) ; Mugla-
furs, Mid Muglafurs, Nether Muglafurs, and Over Muglafurs ;
and many other such instances. These were not divisions simply
for the purpose of this planking, since we find one man more
than once getting two such sheads. Thus Furso (he who gripped
the rigs) got both the plank of East Tufta and the plank of West
Tufta, so that there would have been no point in dividing Tufta
under these circumstances. Evidently these large fields had been
carefully split up into sheads of a plank each at some unknown
date previously.
This rigidly exact and symmetrical method of laying out the
fields is at first sight very surprising and seems to argue a
1 The North Wideford perambulation (23rd February, 1686) gives proof at an
earlier date of the general identity of sheads and planks, for the phrase ' shed or
plank ' is twice used.
34 J- Storer Clouston
systematic method of agriculture much at variance with the
impressions of it one gets from its critics in the old Statistical
Account and other works of the period, who condemn it in no
measured terms. When one comes to think of it, however,
the fact is — with little question — that this precision had no
agricultural basis at all, but was simply necessary to work the
run rig system. For whether the various proprietors held their
share of the town actually in run rig or in the form of ' planks '
(/.<?., any kind of compact area), the apportioning of their interests
would have been well nigh impossible otherwise. How, for
instance, could one have extracted one pennyland, one farthing,
^ farthing, and ^ farthing (which was one of the actual
heritor's shares) from the 6d. land of Hoxa had the fields
been all shapes and sizes, as well as of varying qualities of
soil ?
The final constituent of the town was the oft-mentioned rig.
One also frequently meets with ' spelds,' but the phrase ' rigs or
spelds,' already noted, shows that this was either merely another
name for rigs, or (perhaps more likely) it described some species
of rig. The rig was, and still is, a long and narrow strip of
arable, but as both length and breadth varied, it is manifestly
impossible to suggest even an average area. ShirrefF in his
Agriculture of the Orkney Islands (p. 65), published in 1814, says,
' Ridges (rigs) are of various breadths, often irregular. Perhaps
the most proper breadth, for the generality of Orkney soils,
may be eighteen feet.' This is a very vague and cautious
statement and no length is even indicated, but one may take it
that 1 8 feet wide represented something like the Orkney average.
As for length, ' long rigs ' or ' short rigs ' are so often mentioned
that this dimension obviously varied very considerably. Of
actual recorded measurements I know only two ; one, the two
rigs in Swartaquoy already cited, which were 30 feet broad at the
lower end and 33 feet at the upper, but whether each was that
width or the two together, there is nothing in the context to
show. Probably both together was meant. In the other case
full measurements are given of a rig of land ' called the sched of
the sound ' (presumably ' in the sched ' has been omitted in error
before ' called '), lying beneath the house of Toft Inges in St.
Margaret's Hope, bought by Alexander Sutherland, I3th August,
I623-1 It lay rig and rendall with Magnus Cromarty's land
there and measured ' sixteen scoir futtis and ten ' in length, 32^ feet
1 Heddle of Cletts charters.
The Orkney Townships 35
in breadth at the over part of the rig, 25 J feet « in the midis of the
rig,' and iyj feet at the nether end. So that a rig had consider-
able individuality.
Under these circumstances there was naturally a good deal of
variety in the number of rigs that went to make up a shead or
plank. This is demonstrated in the case of Clouston, where the
number of rigs in every shead is given. Taking the numbers in
the first twelve sheads by way of a sample, we find 9, 17, 9, 10,
12, 9, 1 8, 9, 10, 6, 9, 1 8. A great variety in the size of the rigs
is manifest, and, no doubt, the main difference between them was
in their length, some of the fields being presumably more or less
square and others long and narrow.
Before leaving this part of the subject, one more of these old
township records may be cited as throwing a strong light on the
question of whether cultivation tended to increase or decrease in
Orkney during the centuries preceding the plankings of the
seventeen sixties which sounded the death knell of the run rig
system. This record is dated 3rd March, 1707, and is headed
' Ane nott off the Queens ley landes in the town of Skeatown (in
Deerness), in quhat sheads and skifts it lyes,' the queen being
Queen Anne and her lands the ' pro rege ' or old earldom estates.
Thirty-one sheads are included, and in them a total of 198 rigs
and spelds can be counted, besides a certain number illegible
owing to the state of the paper, probably twenty or thirty more.
This was a considerable amount of land to have gone out of
cultivation all through the town, and there is no reason why it
should have been peculiar to Skeatown. Taking this in conjunc-
tion with the Reports of the Parishes in 1627, in which from parish
after parish comes the same tale of land having gone ley, and with
the earliest rental, that of 1492, where a very high proportion of
land is described as ley, I think there can be no doubt that a
considerable shrinkage in the old cultivated lands took place.
To some extent this would be made up for by breaking out
new ground, but the outbreaks play a very small part in these
township records and seem unlikely to have made up much of
the leeway.
III.
All the evidence goes to show that in the great majority of the
townships the names and the sites of the houses of to-day are
pretty nearly as they were in the seventeenth century (earlier
than that there are no sufficient records by which one can judge).
36 J. Storer Clouston
The earliest available maps date from the first half of the
nineteenth, century, but before then there are a number of Compt
Books and Rentals and many individual allusions to houses in
charters and other deeds, and also several lists of inhabitants, or
sometimes householders, in the various towns of certain parishes.
And then too, good oral tradition can give much valuable informa-
tion ; so that there is no doubt on this point. Naturally the
number varied considerably according to the size of the town, but
one would be giving a fair enough impression of an average
township if one discribed it as having anything from three to six
or seven farms in it, besides two or three cots.
Such a group of farms we can now picture ringed in by its
dyke (with, it seems likely, a * bow dyke ' somewhere within that),
a towmall beside each house, patches of arable cut into little
sheads, generally of a plank in area, interspersed with patches of
meadow ; the balks — sometimes barren, sometimes grassy, and
occasionally cultivated — stretching up to the outer dyke with the
long slopes of the heather hills beyond, and on the other side of
the town generally water, salt or fresh. Each ' house ' itself we
can see as a group of buildings ; in the case of a ' head house '
or * manor place ' a group of some dimensions, such as the
* principal and head house of Foubister,' described as c the hall,
sellaris, chambers, berns, byres, stabiles, under and aboue, with
the yaird, taill, and pertinents thereof.'1
But what was the early history of these towns ? How long
had they been like this, and how did they come by all these
characteristics.
To a very considerable extent these questions can be answered
by the houses themselves.
In the first place, their position is to be noted, and over and
again we find significent evidence of certain houses having been
built on hill balks. The curious case of Paplay where all the
houses occupied this position has been remarked ; but this is
quite exceptional. It has also been mentioned that a certain
house in Quholme was ' biggit ' on a balk, and that several houses
in Clouston were given as points where balks began or ended.
Among other cases actually recorded in documents may be
mentioned a disposition of land in Hourston in Sandwick
together with a quarter of the ' baik of land whereon the houses
of Uphouse are biggit' (2nd December, i63o),2also a disposition
of land in Hensbister in Holm, by William Kettill (8th
1 Reg. Sasines, 2yth July, 1648. * Reg. Sasines.
The Orkney Townships 37
November, I6I5),1 with this addendum, 'and siklyck the said
William giffis and dispones to the said Robert alsmeikle ground
aboue the town of Hensbister appertening to the half pennie land
aboue the said town as will big ane ho us and yaird thereon ' ;
and, again, a similar disposition (February, i626),2 of a farthing
land in Paplay in South Ronaldsay, ' with a balk for bigging
houses on.'
The original houses would, of course, be in the best land and
generally near the shore, and there the chief farms are actually
found. Houses built up on the balks would naturally be later
additions, and in the last two cases quoted we find balks bought
in the seventeenth century for the express purpose of building
new houses ; the reason, no doubt, being that the good land —
especially as it became divided into smaller portions — was too
valuable to be used as building sites. Thus if one is studying
any particular township one can eliminate houses known to have
been erected on balks as not being part of the original town.
The next point to be noted is the names of the farms, which
give the clue to the story of a great many Orkney townships.
This clue was first suggested by noticing that in certain towns
several of the houses — in some cases all — bore such names as
Midhouse, Nisthouse, Overbigging, and the like ; while in others
there was no trace of this type of place-name. For instance,
apart from one or two obviously outskirt houses or cots, there
are only three farms in the 4^d. land of Grimbister in Firth —
Overbigging, Midbigging, and Netherbigging ; in the 3d land
of Linklater in Sandwick, only three — Nether Linklater, Over
Linklater, and West Linklater ; and in the 3d land of Mirbister
in Harray, only three — Nisthouse, Midhouse, and Northbigging.
Knowing the effect of the old odal laws in cutting up land
among the heirs, there can be only one rational explanation of
such names. A single large manor farm or ' bu,' embracing the
whole township, has been divided into three among the sons of
the family. And, in confirmation, one knows that the whole
town of Linklater was actually once the property of the Linklaters,
and the town of Grimbister, of the Grimbisters.
This, as I have said, is the only rational explanation of such
groups of names on a priori ground, for if one tries to think out
any other reasons the difficulties become apparent — especially
in view of the fact that the majority of townships, taking the
isles all over, are without them. And the fact that almost all
1 Graemeshall charters. * Heddle of Cletts Charters.
38 J. Storer Clouston
the chief native landed families originally owned and took their
name from a township of this type is a clinching argument. But,
furthermore, in one early record we can actually see the process
happening. The town of Sabay in St. Andrews parish, was
acquired by Cristie Irving and Edane Paplay, his wife, about
1460, and this couple had two sons. The heiress of their eldest
son married William Flett, and in 1522 the estate was divided
between him and the heirs of John Irving, the younger son, when
William Flett was found to be the eldest heir and to have first
choice, c and gyf (if) the said Williame chesis the Over Houss,
the foirsaid aris till pay to the said Williame thre poundis of
vsuall money of Scotland ; and gyf he chesis the Nedder Houss,
the airis till byde still intill thame ay and quhill the said Williame
ontred thame the sum of twel poundis.' 1 Thus the mansion of
Cristie had already become two houses, the Over and the Nether.
It may be added that in this particular case the township
became reunited in the hands of a later William Irving, and
remained for a couple of centuries the seat of first one, and then
another of the larger landed families, so that the two houses soon
became one again, and all trace of a second has long dis-
appeared.
We thus find at the outset two distinct types of township, one
in which these ' house ' and ' bigging ' names are found, with the
implication that they were once single large farms, and the other
without this feature.
Apart from their association with the larger odal families, towns
of the first type have one or two other distinctive characteristics.
For one thing one finds, as a rule, little earldom and bishopric
land in them at the period of the earliest rentals, evidently because
the wealthier families owning them retained their land more
tenaciously. Also when parcels of land in them were sold in the
seventeenth century (when we first get full record of sales in
Orkney), these parcels are almost always described as ' in Grim-
bister,' * in Mirbister,' etc., and not ' under ' any particular house
or in any particular farm. On the other hand, in the other type
one finds rather oftener than not the house or farm specified.
For example, in Netherbrough and Above-the-Dykes in Grimeston,
the particular house is practically always mentioned.
The three instances given of this first type were selected because
they were very clear and obvious cases, and a number more as
obvious could be mentioned, but a good many have complicating
1 R.E.O. No. xlii.
The Orkney Townships 39
features, and in order to test the whole question I made sketch
maps of almost all the townships in the Mainland, South Ronaldsay
and Rowsay, working from old maps where they existed, and
otherwise from the six-inch Ordnance Survey sheets, and checking
the houses from the various sources of information mentioned
above. One thus got plenty of material for making comparisions
and realising the possibilities in apparently exceptional and
puzzling cases.
Before going further, a brief general glance at these c house '
and 'bigging' names may be useful. * Bigging ' means in
Orkney a group of buildings ; probably it originally implied in
most cases that the houses and farmsteads for more than one
family stood close together in a group. A bigging was thus
usually a large farm, though this was by no means always the
case, for the joint owners or tenants might both have been in a
very small way. It implied no contradistinction to ' house,' for
one finds a farm in Knarston in Harray first called Nisthouse,
and afterwards Nistaben (a contraction for bigging), and one in
Clouston styled first Newhouse, and then Newbigging ; and, in
fact, a dual homestead was frequently styled merely * house.'
Most of the prefixes, such as Mid, Over, Upper, Nether, Est
(East), explain themselves. Nist was pure Norse, and meant
Nether ; one actually finds Nistahow in Gorsness in Kendall
appearing on an old record as Nythershaw. Near or Neir is the
Norse »jyr = new, and we find Nearhouse and Newhouse used
interchangeably for the same farm in Sands in Deerness. Upper
often took the form of Appi or Ap, as in Upperhouse in Hourston,
which is found under the one form just as often as the other.
In many cases, very likely in all if early enough evidence were
available, the houses with these names stood at one time within a
short distance of one another — in some cases practically adjoining.
In course of time, however, they always came to be rebuilt further
apart, and it is only where old maps exist, or early sites are
remembered, that one discovers their ancient proximity.
A recognition of the significance of these various names led to
one interesting little discovery. In the town of Germiston in
Stenness there is both a Nisthouse and a Nistaben, besides an
Eastaben and an Aphouse. As Nisthouse and Nistaben mean
the same thing, the logical conclusion seemed to be that two towns
must here be rolled into one, and the presence of a burn running
through the midst, with one of these two farms on either side,
gave some colour to this theory. Shortly afterwards, in going
40 J. Storer Clouston
through a collection of old township maps in the Kirkwall Record
Room, there appeared first a separate map of * Germiston,
Be-north the Burn,' and then one of 'Germiston, Be-south the
Burn.' Which shows that one can occasionally be logical and yet
right.
The fact that both these old bus, each found in this divided
condition, have always gone under the common name of
Germiston, suggests strongly that even they were originally one,
but that this division of the town into two occurred at a con-
siderably earlier period than that at which the Nisthouse, Aphouse
etc. names appeared. And another clear example of the same
thing has a further argument which suggests the same conclusion.
This is the town of Overbrough in Harray, where one finds in
1835 a Nisthouse and an Upperbigging, evident * opposite
numbers,' and then at the very highest part of the town an
Overhouse and two farms called Upper Town. Clearly Over-
house was the highest house of the Upper Town (which it
actually is geographically) and Upperbigging and Nisthouse
formed the Nether Town. Furthermore, one finds in 1649 a
Thomas Taylor, as grandson of Magnus Taylor of Nisthouse,
selling the * Head House of Overbrough,' i.e. of the Nether
Town J ; while the family of Brough, who took their name from
Overbrough, sold, I5th Oct., 1617, land beside St. Michael's Kirk,
i.e. in the Upper Town. The connection of the family of
Brough with only one of the two old bus adds point to the idea
that the bus were separated at an early date.
We come now to a very common species of township belonging
to this first type ; towns in which we find the house and bigging
names predominant, but also with other houses which are not mere
obvious cots on the hill. Thus a sketch map of the 6d. land of
Redland in Firth as it used to be, accompanying a very instructive
paper on that township by Mr. J. Firth which appeared in the
Old Lore Miscellany, shows a Nistaben, an Estaben, two ' houses
of Redland ' — North and South (no doubt the ' Head House of
Redland ' sold by James Flett, eldest heir of the Fletts of Red-
land in 1634,2 and afterwards divided into two houses), four cots,
and two other farms called Langalour and Badyateum. What
were these two farms ; original components of the town, or
houses built on slices of the Head House lands, cut off" and sold ?
And the same question can be asked about a number of other
townships.
1 Reg. Sasines, 1649. 2 ^e8- Sasines, Vol. iv. fol. 126.
The Orkney Townships 41
Generally speaking, it may be said that the towns which were
quite certainly single bus (all the names being of the house or
bigging kind) run from a 3d to a 4jd land, and that, apart from
a few of the old earls' bus in the North Isles, the largest odal
bus known are the 9d lands of the Hall of Ireland and of Sabay.
Sabay, however, had one or two smaller places of some sort in it
at one time ; while the yd land of Rendall, containing the Hall of
Kendall, the old seat of one of the most conspicuous of the
native odal families — the Kendalls, turns out from the record of
an action in 1768, to have been composed of a 6d land called the
North Town, containing the Hall and the other chief house, the
Breck, and of a smaller South Town.
In one such township it has been possible to trace fully the
histories of all the houses, and a brief account of what happened
there provides some instructive facts. This town is the 6d. land
of Clouston in Stenness, where I have been able to trace all the
land to its various owners at the beginning of the seventeenth
century, and there happen to be also an unusual number of peram-
bulations and plankings preserved. From the middle of the
seventeenth century onwards it contained Netherbigging, also
styled * the House of Clouston,' and both from its name and its
position (quite by itself on the best old land on the loch shore),
manifestly the old head house, besides seven other houses. These
included an Appihouse, which on the surface seemed surely to
signify the other half of a divided bu. All these seven, though
small farms, were (with perhaps one diminutive exception) more
than mere cots.
Then in the list of sheads appeared a lost Overbigging, also in
the good old land a little above Netherbigging. And then, one
after the other, all the other houses, with one single exception,
were found to be certainly built either on the hill balks or on the
edge of them (no doubt in all cases actually on balks), Appihouse
as well as the rest. The lands that lay under them were found to
be bought for the most part from various Cloustons, chiefly
daughters, and at the time of their purchase were * possessed and
occupied ' (i.e. farmed) by men who certainly did not live in those
houses. They were thus all new farms and new houses in the
early part of the seventeenth century. Some of the land forming
them was probably part of Netherbigging, and most of the rest
may safely be taken to be the lands of the vanished Overbigging.
Netherbigging, the old House of Clouston, alone remained in the
male line of the family.
42 J. Storer Clouston
The one exception which stood not on the balks but in the
middle of the town, a little above the two ' biggings,' was called
Barnhouse, and the history of this farm is revealed in a disposition
of loth May 1654, where the owner gave to his son 'the kill
berne and berne house.'1 A kiln barn was an extra barn attached
to some at least of the larger farms, which always stood a little
distance above the homestead. One thus gets the township re-
constructed as a large bu with its manor house, subsequently
divided into a nether and an over bigging, and a kiln barn standing
above. This, it may be added, is all on charter evidence, the only
deduction being the very obvious one that a great part of the land
must have come out of the vanished Overbigging.
Applying what we know from this case to townships where
such detailed evidence is lacking, the chances seem to be that the
odd farms in a place, for instance, like Redland would have the
same origin as cuts so to speak, from the joint of the bu. The
history of this particular Appihouse is also instructive (especially
remembering the Appihouse in Hourston also built on a balk)
as showing that a single specimen of a house or bigging name
found in a town — as one occasionally does find one, may not in
the least have the usual significance.
Another point is that the most diminutive of these farms
(probably a cot) was styled Blackha' or Blackball. The ha' or
hall names are very common in Orkney, given in a derisive or
jocular spirit. Gowdenha applied to a peculiarly miserable cot,
Wrangleha to an ex-alehouse where quarrels were frequent,
Tarryha to a small wooden house covered with tar, are actual
instances, and this type of ha' must not be confounded with the
true halls or head houses. It is also to be noted that the house
' biggit upoun the Kingis baik ' in Quhome was even then
(1534/85) styled the Hall of Quhome, evidently because it was
the residence of Mr. Jerome Tulloch, the most considerable
magnate in the district — an exceptional and deceptive case.
Turning now to the other type of township, where no such
house or bigging names are found, there is pretty plain evidence
in a certain number of cases that the reverse conclusion applies
to them and that they were formed not by the division of a single
large bu but by a grouping together of several farms.
In a few instances this is obvious simply from their size.
Districts such as Inner and Outer Stromness, North Side and South
Side and Marwick in Birsay are too large to have ever been the
1 Reg. Sasines.
The Orkney Townships 43
lands of one house. And, in fact, the 1622 division of Inner
Stromness already cited was conducted on principles that in
themselves suggest quite another sort of township from the house
and bigging kind.
Then there are other cases which are actually treated as
collections of separate farms in the earlier rentals. In 1595 the
4^d. land of Beaquoy in Birsay is entered as ' Beaquoy, Housbie,
and Cloke,' and these three are still the chief farms ; Beaquoy
from which the whole town took its name, lying right at the one
end. In the same rental the 6d. land of Tingwall in Kendall is
given under separate headings, the farms of Tingwall and
Howaquoy being entered as a 4^d. land, and Crook and Banks
as i^d. The case of Graves in Holm composed of Graves and
Breckan has already been noticed, and several similar towns are
found in the two earliest rentals, such as Midland in Rendall,
entered as Garsent and Mydland, and Garth in Harray, entered
as Garth and Mydgarth. In all these instances it will be seen
that the name of one of the farms has been given to the group
forming the town, but that that farm has not been split up to
make the town.
Other composite townships are found without any name-farm.
Thus in all the rentals from 1492 onwards Swanbister and
Midland in Orphir are entered not as a whole but farm by farm,
and Kirbister in Deerness is given under several component parts
in 1595 ; there being no farm or house with those names in any of
them. As showing the complete independence of the various
parts of Swanbister, we even find that their pennylands held
varying numbers of merklands.
Those are all clear cases, but in certain other townships, such
as Netherborough in Harray and Scabra in Sandwick, the
regularity with which parcels of land in them are described as ' in
Bea,' ' under the hous of Tofts,' etc., and very seldom simply ' in
Netherborough ' or ' in Scabra,' points very strongly to the same
conclusion.
With regard to the multitude of towns of this type where there
is little evidence available so far, one can but continue to look for
it, and meanwhile judge tentatively in the light of the known
cases, which certainly make it look as through the majority, any-
how, of such townships had been groups of farms at a time when
the first type of town had been single bus.
Returning for a moment to the single bu type of township,
one general feature is very noticeable, and that is that they are by
44 J- Storer Clouston
no means found all over the islands, but are almost confined to
certain parts of the mainland, especially Harray, Stenness, and
Firth. As almost all the larger native odal families took their
surnames from them, naturally these families are found where
the towns are, but what is decidedly interesting is that this seems
to argue that this had been the distribution of the chief odal
families for a very long period.
Another interesting thing is that { house ' and ' bigging ' place-
names of this kind are scarcely found in Norway at all. The
Norwegian law was that head bus went to the eldest son and were
not divided. The Orkney law presumably started by being the
same, but when we first get records to test it we find that it
permitted division, though only among sons. The time at which
this change took place (a date to which we have no clue) would
seem not at all unlikely to be the period at which the large odal
bus were divided and these place-names arose in Orkney.
When this division came about, and instead of one house, two
or three arose, it was evidently the eldest son's lot which came to
be styled the Head House, Manor House, or simply the House
of the township (and presumably he would choose the original
mansion house). In regard to several head houses, certainly,
there is evidence to this effect. Thus in 1580 William Sinclair,
eldest son of the deceased Magnus Sinclair of Stank, sold ' the
housses and bigingis with toftis, croftis, and barne yaird Hand
adjacent with the said houss of Stank, with the rycht and roith
broukit be me efter father, guidschir and grandschir, that is to say
the heid house callit Stank, with all maner of houses thairto
belangand respective.' The purchaser also got the right to
redeem any land belonging to William or his brothers * haldin
of that heid house of Stank.'1 It will be noticed that not only
had the eldest son a hereditary right to the Head House, but
that some rights and privileges seemed to go with it.
There is also documentary proof of the ' Manor Place ' of
Corrigall, the < Head House ' of Redland, the < Bow ' of Kendall,
and the * Head House ' of Knarston being sold by (or in one
case having an earlier sale confirmed by) the eldest sons of the
eldest branches of the families of Corrigall, Flett, Rendall, and
Knarston ; and in one case a definite privilege attaching to the
head house is stated. In 1683 a disposition of certain lands in
Knarston in Harray included the Head House sometime per-
taining to Gilbert Knarston of that ilk (afterwards sold by his
1 R.E.O., No. chxx.
The Orkney Townships 45
eldest son), ' with the roith and uppa' of the same.1 So that the
constantly mentioned right of the * uppa ' seems to have been
a privilege belonging to the head house — when there was one.
It thus becomes possible to trace the evolution of this kind of
Orkney township from a single large farm with a single mansion
house into a condition in which two or three sons occupied
different houses standing close together, and shared the land for
fairness sake on the run rig principle ; and finally, as parcels were
sold to strangers, and the town got more and more broken up,
into a maze of sheads and rigs and balks and freedoms, yet with
certain faint reminiscences — such as the head house with its
uppa — of its lost unity. And as for the other sort of town, one
would be inclined to surmise that they were run rig only in
sections in early days, as portioners arose in the various farms ;
and then as land changed hands and sometimes broke up and
sometimes amalgamated, things grew so complicated that the
whole town became rendalled together. Those, at least, are the
likeliest lines of development that seem to emerge from what
survive of these old township records.
J. STOKER CLOUSTON.
1 Smoogro charters.
Lord Guthrie and the Covenanters
IN his note appended to my criticism of his paper (Scottish
Historical Review, xvi. 307), Lord Guthrie says : * Dr. Hay
Fleming . . . convicts me of an undoubted error, which he
himself, however, calls a trifling one, I having given credit to one
Covenanter, Sir Thomas Hope, which belongs to another Cove-
nanter, Alexander Henderson.' I did not call that a trifling
error ; but characterised it, and the one concerning the subscribing
of the Solemn League and Covenant by the Scottish Parliament
and the General Assembly, as trifling compared with some of his
other errors.
Among the more serious of these which I pointed out were the
following :
(1) That the subscribers of the National Covenant swore to
be ' careful to root out of their empire all hereticks, and enemies
to the true worship of God, who shall be convicted by the true
Kirk of God of the foresaid crimes.'
(2) That the Covenanters £ bound themselves, under the
National Covenant, not only to resist the imposition of Laudian
or Anglo-Catholic Episcopacy upon Presbyterian Scotland, but
to compel all Roman Catholics in Scotland to become Protestants,
and all Episcopalians in Scotland to become Presbyterians.'
(3) That < the Scottish Covenanters understood that both
they and their English coadjutors were pledged [by the Solemn
League and Covenant] to force Episcopal England to adopt the
Presbyterian system of Church Government as it existed in Scot-
land.'
In his note Lord Guthrie wisely refrains from attempting to
defend any of these three errors. To the first alone he alludes,
and in doing so he evades the point at issue, and changes his
position as if he had merely said that the Covenanters were
* expressing their own conscientious convictions when they
quoted the series of Scots Acts providing that all rulers shall be
careful to root out of their empire all heretics and enemies to
Lord Guthrie and the Covenanters 47
the true worship of God, who shall be convicted by the true Kirk
of God of the said crimes.' There is an important difference
between his previous allegation, that the Covenanters swore to
root out heretics, and his present one that they held that their
rulers should root them out. So far as 1 am concerned, his
introductory remarks about toleration are altogether irrelevant.
I neither said nor suggested that the ideas of the Covenanters on
toleration resembled those of the present day.
Other three of his statements to which I drew attention, he
does not venture to vindicate :
(1) That the citizens of Aberdeen were compelled to swear
that they subscribed the National Covenant 'freely and willingly.'
(2) That because the use of the Lord's Prayer did not com-
mend itself to the English Puritans, it was c dropped from the
worship of the Scottish people.'
(3) That Burns confounded the Solemn League and Covenant
with the National Covenant.
He tries, however, to justify his suggestion that sordid motives
influenced the Scots in their decision to help the English Parlia-
ment against the King ; but here also he changes his ground.
Previously he suggested that ' the glitter of English gold ' helped
to explain ' the action of the Scots Estates and the Scots people.'
Now he restricts its influence to ' the Scots Covenanting army,'
which he boldly alleges was induced ' to support the English
Republican army, in England, against the Scots King.' It may
not be amiss to remind his Lordship in passing that the English
Parliamentary army was not a Republican army at that time, and
did not become so until several years afterwards. Again, he
further narrows his indictment : 'In the case of the body of the
army I do not place " the glitter of gold " as the determining
motive ; in the case of the large number of Scots officers, who
flocked back from the continent, where they had been subjected
to the demoralizing life of a mercenary soldier, ... I am
afraid mercenary motives must have bulked much larger.' It is
not clear whether he believes that these officers flocked back to
Scotland after the Solemn League was drafted, or at an earlier
emergency and remained. Anyhow they constituted neither 'the
Scots Estates' nor £ the Scots people'. If the officers of fortune,
who served in Scotland in 1640 and 1641, did not magnify their
hardships, they had little temptation either to remain in Scotland
or to flock back to it. Some of them had no pay for sixteen months,
some eighteen, some twenty ; and not only had they been neces-
48 D. Hay Fleming
sitated to sell or pawn all their belongings and to use their credit
to the very uttermost, but they had been driven to an extremity
which shame doth rather pass by in silence than proclaim.1
In his notice of Papers relating to the Army of the Solemn League
and Covenant, Lord Guthrie said : ' His Majesty's meagre ex-
chequer could not afford the golden bait held out by his rebel-
lious English subjects. Besides, the Scots had ample experience
of the small reliance to be placed on His Majesty's most solemn
promises, whereas, two years before, as already mentioned, the
Scots in the army of the National Covenant had received £200,000
from England.' In more striking and picturesque language he
had previously put it : ' The Scots army went home with
£200,000 of English gold in their pockets.' This argument
was ignored in my criticism ; it may be glanced at now. The
statement that the Scots army went home in 1641 with £200,000
of English gold in their pockets is a grotesque exaggeration.
The English pay was not only irregular, it was usually if not
always in arrear, and the Scots suffered much in consequence.
In July, 1641, General Leslie wrote : * Our armie hath susteined
hunger and nakednesse with ane invincible patience, in the mid-
dest of plentie, that we might not give offence to our common
adversaries.' 2 The balance due to the Scots in June, 1641, was
stated at £115,750, and they were informed that they would
speedily have paid to them £200,000, whereof £80,000 was to
be the first instalment of the brotherly assistance ; but out of this
sum they were to pay the debts owing to the northern counties.3
The balance fluctuated, and as it increased so would the debts of
the Scots army. By the 4th of August it was reduced to £52,300 ;4
and by the 6th that also was paid ; and, before the Scots army
left England, the £80,000 of the promised brotherly assistance
was likewise to be paid, less £38,200 to be deducted as the sum
salvo calculo due by the Scots to the counties of Durham and
Northumberland and the town of Newcastle.6 So far from being
overburdened with English gold, the Scots found, a month after
lActs of Tarliament, v. 675.
^Acts of Parliament, v. 627. In the previous March the Scottish army was
'reduced to great straits ' (Domestic Calendar, 1640-1641, p. 503.)
^Journals of the Commons, ii. 177, 187.
* Journals of the Commons, ii. 235.
5 'Acts of Parliament, v. 641, 642. A few days later the precise amount due
by the Scots was put at £38,888 os. 8d. (Journal of the Commons, ii. 248, 255),
which in Professor Terry's Alexander Leslie (p. 152) is misprinted £33,888 os. 8d.
Lord Guthrie and the Covenanters 49
marching out of England, that they had not money enough to pay
the common soldiers.1
Had I merely wished to point out the errors in Lord Guthrie's
paper it would have been an easy matter to run up a lengthy list,
as for example :
(1) That, in Knox's time, superintendents co-existed with
presbyteries. There were no presbyteries in Scotland in Knox's
time.
(2) That the National Covenant ' enacts.' The framers of
that covenant did not claim that by it any Acts of Parliament
could either be enacted or re-enacted.
(3) That Alexander Henderson is not mentioned in the
Papers relating to the Army of the Solemn League and Covenant.
There is at least one reference to him (ii. 395), and it is rather
a pathetic one.
Lord Guthrie deems it ' curious ' that I treated his paper ' as
an attack on the Covenanters, instead of a defence, on different
lines, by an admirer.' It did not occur to me that it was intended
either as an attack or defence. I charitably supposed that, despite
its many faults, it was meant as a deliverance from the bench, not
a pleading from the bar.
D. HAY FLEMING.
of Parliament, v. 673.
Reviews of Books.
ACTA DOMINORUM CoNCILII, ACTS OF THE LORDS OF COUNCIL IN
CIVIL CAUSES. Vol. II., 1496-1500, with some Acta Auditorum et
Dominorum Concilii, 1469-1483. Edited by George Neilson, LL.D.
and Henry Paton, M.A. Pp. cxxxv, 587. Royal 8vo. Edinburgh :
H.M. Stationery Office. 1918. (Issued 1919). 2is. net.
THIS book has been long and eagerly waited. The date on the title-
page of Volume I. is 1839, so that eighty years have elapsed since Thomas
Thomson hurriedly printed off his text, and did not wait to illuminate it
by the introduction which he was so well fitted to write. The circum-
stances of the publication of the first volume constituted nothing less than
a disaster to the study of Scottish legal history, and it matters little to a
later generation whether the blame is to be attached to the Home Secretary
of 1839 and his advisers, or to the great master of Scottish record scholars
himself. What does matter is that the Deputy Clerk Register and the
Curator of the Historical Department of the Register House have been
wise enough to obtain for the second volume the services of two editors
who are pre-eminently fitted to record and to illustrate the evidence which
it contains. Mr Paton's name is ample security for an accurate text,
deciphered by an expert palaeographer, and printed with scrupulous
exactitude, and everyone who knows Dr. Neilson's distinguished work
must bring to the reading of the Introduction the very highest expectations.
These expectations will not be disappointed. As to the text, the present
writer cannot do more than express his personal confidence in its value
and importance for the history of Scottish institutions. The field is
practically new. Not many years ago, the late Sheriff Mackay, whose
work and whose personality are still remembered with gratitude and
respect, declared that ' before James V. instituted the Court of Session in
1532, there was no system of jurisprudence to which the name of Scots
Law could properly be applied.' Here are 500 pages in which we have
the records of the application to individual cases of what was indubitably
a legal system ; even a glance at the twenty pages of Legal Analysis
which the editors have confined to illustrative examples of points of law is
sufficient evidence on that score ; and the period covered by the volume
ends more than thirty years before the date selected by Sheriff Mackay.
It is obviously impossible to discover at a first reading the whole value of
this new material, even when, as with myself, interest and knowledge are
confined to its historical, as distinguished from its more strictly legal,
implications.
Neilson : Acta Dominorum Concilii 5 1
The value and importance of the Introduction are not less notable,
but more easily recognisable. It falls into three sections — information
about the MSS. and their publication ; suggestions about the Committees
of the Scottish Parliament, their practice and their history ; and a discussion
of the origines of Scots Law. The first of these draws attention to, and
explains the significance of, the method adopted by Robertson in the
suppressed first volume of the Parliamentary Records, and states the
principles which have governed the preparation of the present volume. In
the second section, Dr. Neilson traces the history of the Auditores and of
the Domini Concilii, insists upon the importance of Parliament as a Court
of Law, and illustrates from contemporary poetry the demand for a better
administration of justice, based on the institution of committees 'buttressed
with jitrisperitiy and selected by the Estates of the Realm in Parliament
assembled. He shows the steps, not always following a precise course of
evolution, by which the Auditors were gradually replaced by the bodies
known as Session and as Council, until, at the close of his period, we reach
the Continual Council, which was the precursor of the Court of Session.
The place of Auditors in English and French legal history is explained,
and the explanation leads to an interesting association of the Scottish Lords
of the Articles with the English delegates on petitions appointed in the
reigns of the first three Edwards. The general line of the ingenious and
suggestive argument may be gathered from the following sentences :
4 Parliament deputed to a committee in two divisions (one comprehensive
and general in scope, and the other specialized for judicial functions) the
unfinished business of the Parliament until the ensuing session. The
commission for each division ran only during the adjournment. The
provinces of the two committees often overlapped, and there is reason
to believe that the Auditors acted with and were part of the general
committee ' hafand the power of Parliament.' ... In the occasional
sittings of the full committee there may thus be recognised the simple
exercise of parliamentary authority and control by the ultimate committee
deputed to hold the Parliament. In the meetings of the Auditors, whether
with or without other members or coadjutors, equally with the analogous
meetings of the Council, there is the less difficulty in understanding the
situation when emphasis is once more laid [as in Robertson's suppressed
volume] on the unity and indivisibility of the record of Parliament.
Differentiation of function often goes far without separation of records,
but the tendency is for the differentiation to become absolute only by the
setting up of a separate record. . . . King and Parliament were [in the
fifteenth century] together evolving from auditorial antecedents, and were
before long to succeed in definitely establishing the Court of Session,
indubitably the supreme achievement of the Scottish parliamentary
system.'
Much knowledge, reflection, and insight are crowded into the para-
graph from which these sentences are taken, and the discussion represents
a very distinct advance in the investigation of the origins of our institutions.
In the last portion of the Introduction we have a not less important
discussion of the origins not merely of our institutions but of Scots law
52 Neilson : Acta Dominorum Concilii
itself. The period covered by the text evinces * no great novelty of
principles, but a constant, though gradual, change of detail,' and this
change affords ' the weightiest and most extended evidence we have for
the Reception of Roman Law in Scotland.' Among the influences, the
working of which is traceable in this connexion, a high place is assigned
to the beloved and revered name of William Elphinstone, a Glasgow
student and the Founder of the University of Aberdeen, one of the very
ablest, as he was also one of the very saintliest, of the whole group of
College Founders on both sides of the Tweed. An earlier date than is
usually assigned to the Reception is one of the noteworthy results of the
research which has gone to make this Introduction, but the Reception was
never, in Dr. Neilson 's view, complete in the sense that the Common Law
of Scotland could be taken as an equivalent term for Roman Law. An
acute analysis of French parallels leads Dr. Neilson on to his two most
important suggestions. The first of these is that the Scottish Parliament
may be analogous, not to ' the English Parliament making for a primarily
legislative object,' but rather to 'the French Parliament culminating in
a court of law.' 'That the king's subjects should be * servit of the law,' —
may this not have been the dominant function of Parliament in theory as
in fact ? ' The second is that the affinities between French and Scottish
ideas and methods of procedure may have had ' something directly to do
with the gradual change which was coming over the law, and conducing
to the incorporation with the old laws and customs of a considerable body
of doctrine from the civilians.' With a further expression of this illumi-
nating and attractive idea we must close our attempt to survey the outlines
of these invaluable introductory pages :
1 Is the speculation too rash that the legal unities and affinities of France
and Scotland are part of the great chapter of the Reception of Roman Law,
that they are the footprint, still sharply clear and recognisable, of that
triumphant movement over the juristic mind of Europe, and that they
promise some day, when these initial hints are supplemented by the studies
of other investigators, to make good, as a self-evident proposition, the
inference that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Reception came
into Scotland by way of France ? And when in 1532 the Court of
Session was founded on the model of the Parlement of Paris, was that by
any means the first time the pitcher had been sent to the well ? '
ROBERT S. RAIT.
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF SIR FRANCIS PALGRAVE. Edited by his son,
Sir R. H. Inglis Palgrave. In ten volumes.
THE HISTORY OF NORMANDY AND ENGLAND. In four volumes. Vol. I.
Pp. Ivi. 560. Vol. II. xxxix. 588. R. 8\o. Cambridge: University
Press. 1919. 305. net each.
IT is sixty years since the History of Normandy and England, the latest
of Sir Francis Palgrave's works, partially saw the light ; yet recently the
piety of his last surviving son, Sir Inglis Palgrave, boldly planned a complete
edition of his father's chief works, though he unfortunately did not live to
Palgrave: Works of Sir Francis Palgrave 53
witness the publication of the first instalment of this enterprise in the two
noble volumes now before us.
There is no danger of some aspects of Palgrave's work being forgotten :
every medievalist has had, and will long have, occasion to make use of the
great series of texts which he edited for the Record Commission. The
comparatively few, who are interested in the growth of historical science
in this country, appreciate the importance of the work of the man who, as
first Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, inaugurated the new system by
which most of the public records of England and Wales were centralised
under his care in the new Record Office in Chancery Lane. Yet
Palgrave's personal contribution to constructive history has fallen into
greater oblivion than it deserves. The extraordinary diffuseness of his
style, his excessive discursiveness, and some looseness of scholarship, which
tended to conceal the wide range of his learning, have, along with the
inaccessibility of the old editions of his works, done something to militate
against his fame. Palgrave too was a thorough going advocate of extreme
and sometimes unpopular views of history. Thus Scottish readers will
remember how he upheld Edward I.'s claims to overlordship over the
northern kingdom with the fervour and conviction that the hot partisan
brings into the discussion of modern politics. In a similar fashion Palgrave's
sturdy but somewhat one-sided and over-eager maintenance of extreme
'Romanistic' theory did harm to his reputation in a generation addicted to
the maintenance with almost equal one-sidedness of the * Germanistic '
view of the origin of most English institutions. But the whirligig of time
has its revenges, and the modern reaction against Germanism, heightened,
but not initiated, by the recent facts of political history, will perhaps seek
in this reprint some justification for a faith which our fathers would have
spurned.
It may be doubted, however, whether Palgrave's big books will ever be
widely read or exercise much influence. It would perhaps be better if
they were more studied than they are likely to be. Palgrave was a pioneer,
and had with the qualities some of the defects of a pioneer. But he had
gifts of imagination and insight, a wealth of vision and colour, a zeal for
constructive work, and a scorn of narrow pedantry and mere detail which
are too often found somewhat to seek in the more meticulous scholarship
of the modern generation. He was always the man of letters. He not
only wrote historical novels, but in his more sober books it is hard to say
where the science ends and where the fancy comes in. Accordingly his
outlook seems to us extraordinarily old-fashioned. Yet a hasty scamper
through his diffuse pages must leave in any scholarly reader's mind a strong
conviction that he was often working on the right paths, and some of his
wildest flights of imagination are extremely suggestive. He was a pioneer
of historical travel ; he taught that history must be written from records ;
he upheld the doctrine of historical continuity ; he believed in the impor-
tance of constitutional and even of administrative history. He emphasized,
often in quaint fashions, the essential interconnection between the medieval
history of France and England, the importance of the Church as an institu-
tion and as a spiritual influence, the value of the ' dark ages ' as a period of
54 Palgrave : Works of Sir Francis Palgrave
progressive and rapidly ripening civilisation. Those to whom his books
will now perhaps for the first time become familiar will be pleased to
recognise in his obiter dicta truths long familiar to them from other
channels. How many of us have quoted the chance remark of Stubbs that
the medieval chancery was the secretariat of state for all departments. But
if we turn to i. 47 of the present reprint we shall find that Palgrave wrote
a generation earlier than Stubbs that 'the chancery was the great secretariat
of the realm, the chancellor being the secretary of state for all departments.'
In 1824 he contemplated an outline of the history of the chancery. That
outline has not yet been written by Palgrave or anybody else. And is not
almost the last word of Anglo-Norman history expressed in two other
chance sayings of Palgrave's in i. 58: * William the Conqueror's govern-
ment was not so much* a system of innovation, as one which prepared the
way for a system, new equally to Normandy and England '; * England
gave to Normandy more than she borrowed.' The curious reader will find
many shrewd anticipations of modern scholarship in Palgrave, half concealed
by the verbose rigmarole in which they are sometimes imbedded. Let us
then recognise his great qualities the more, since his defects are so patent.
It is the fate of the pioneer not to get his deserts, especially from the latter
generations which have climbed to greater heights by mounting on his
shoulders. In the same way scholarly travellers in Northern Italy have
learnt much from their Murray's Guide. But how few of them know
that Palgrave was himself the author of Murray's Handbook for North
Italy, which he began as early as 1839.
The personality of Palgrave was a very vivid and considerable one, and
our gratitude to Sir Inglis is due not only for reprinting the sketch of his
father's life, which his brother, Sir Reginald, wrote for the Royal Society,
but for amplifying it with some personal pages of his own. In particular,
the copious extracts from Palgrave's letters are extremely well worth
reading. They show his zeal, his force, his impetuosity, his varied
interests, his immense curiosity, the width of his information and the eye
for local colour, both for its own delight and as an embellishment for his
histories. Not the least impressive among his travel impressions is his holy
terror of the restoration of ancient buildings. 'Never restore, only repair'
was his doctrine. ' Restoration is impossible ' he says again. * You
cannot grind old bones new. You may repeat the outward form,' but
c there is an anachronism in every stone.' These are surely sound sayings
for a man writing in 1847.
Sir Inglis Palgrave has also told us something of his father's historical
ideals and methods of work. He has also aspired to bring his father's
works up to date, but the attempts which have been made in this direction
are not very successful. The maps, tables, and similar helps to the reader
are useful enough, though some of them are guilty of strange lapses into
obsolete doctrine. But in truth the scholarship of a work written two
generations ago cannot be modernised. The attempt is as impossible as the
restoration of an old building. Heroic efforts have been made to bring the
bibliographies of Palgrave into some relation to modern scholarship, but the
effort has been directed by somewhat inadequate knowledge of what has
Davies: Baronial Opposition to Edward II. 55
been done since Palgrave wrote, and with all the scholarship in the world
it could hardly be successful. The elaborate notes appended to Palgrave's
texts are largely unnecessary. When they tell us what is true they tell
us what every intelligent reader of a book like this could supply for himself.
When they occasionally attempt to call upon the resources of modern
scholarship to elucidate Palgrave's text they are less effective. In subse-
quent volumes the Cambridge Press would be well advised to drop all these
attempts at the impossible task of bringing Palgrave up to date. But the
republication of the texts of Palgrave's own works is a worthy enterprise
and deserves every encouragement. T. F. TOUT.
THE BARONIAL OPPOSITION TO EDWARD II. : ITS CHARACTER AND
POLICY. A Study in Administrative History. By James Con way
Davies. Pp. x, 644. Cr. 410. Cambridge : At the University Press.
1918. 2is. net.
IN publishing in revised form the thesis which gained the Thirlwall Prize
in the University of Cambridge in 1917, Mr. J. C. Davies has made
a substantial contribution to the administrative history of the reign of
Edward II. Only some 200 pages of his book are devoted to the narrative
of the action of the baronial opposition ; the remaining 400 contain
a minute analysis of the household system in which the royal power
entrenched itself against baronial attack, and an appendix of 139 illustrative
documents.
This proportion of treatment is inevitable and significant. It arises from
the fact that Mr. Davies holds the view which was advocated by Professor
Tout in his book on The Place of Edward II. in English History, and which
is borne in upon every student of the period, namely, that the key to the
political events of the reign must be sought in the history of administration.
That fact once grasped, the historian will be able, with relief, to readjust
his ideas of relative values. He will be able to avert his eyes from the
sordid tragedy in which Edward II. lost his throne, his self-respect, and
finally his life. He will see in that revolution, based on spite and jealousy,
only one, and that by no means the most significant, of contemporary
attacks on royal power. He will find that bigger issues cling about earlier
and less startling actions, beginning with the far-reaching claims of control
made in the Ordinances, and continuing through a series of baronial ex-
periments. Moreover, he will realise that though the individual perished,
the system lived, and that Edward III., for good or ill, inherited almost
unimpaired that household system which gave strength even to the weak-
ness of his father.
Mr. Davies' work is well documented. He has made careful use of
printed sources, and he has despoiled the records in the British Museum,
the Public Record Office, and the libraries of Canterbury Cathedral,
Cambridge University, and elsewhere. Particularly notable are his
researches in the Memoranda Rolls of the Exchequer, which have enabled
him to tell us much that is new with regard to the persons forming the
so-called Middle Party, the only organisation in which there seemed for a
time to lie some hope of a dignified settlement of quarrels and a successful
','• l);ivi< U:ironi;il Opposition to Kdward II.
< .,n. In. i i.l . ill. in . I'iMiiiili. '..mi.- .OIIKI i oini /.ilii.iUc paid- iilari willl
refltti.l i" i In- k m;-' . ' .in in 1 1 .ni< I i !•. M l.i 1 1 MI i to id.- i-x< h< iju> i . 'I he ncrict
ol Am Mill < oil. .|ioii<l< ii> i 1.1. IIIIHI Ic .1 HUM li illir.tiativr inaliii.il
JIM! HUH IK • ill I III ., ,IH ll .1 . ': I ' MUM' .1 p< I .'.ll.ll i|ll.lll' I lidW ''II
ill' I III.', I I . IIM i .K I .111.1 I', inl.l..! '. . • .il.o.ll 'I holpw.llel Vllli ( '.! .lie DIM'
ii. ...... I III- mill) in .l.ilM .. Hi lli> -n I'd wli' I. |.i u.itr dr. (Hili , llll( li .ihrci
.'.I .mlip.ilhl.. Ml |)i-,. lir. i >,III|..IK i| Wllll llir pinilril c.ln
IWo in inn ' i i|, I • o|in -. ol ill. Ol'lm.im . . ol I'M, Wllll ll lolllH.1 ihr
.1 iii in • j.'.mi ol 1 1. 1 1 OH 1. 1 1 .ill.ii k, ill nl wrie ijiioli il l.y i on i. i up 01. . i M . with
.ilniM.i p.iili. n. ii.i|iMiny in ihr •..inn- In.-. itli wiili MAgnft Cwrta.
h-uil'il iM iiiii.ni kit ulno been given n. ihr •,., i ;(||c.l ' ,u Minimal ordi-
n mi . •-.,' wiili vurioiiH ttuggtftion on iiic pn//im;' question of their relaiM.ii
lo ill. in nil ilo < mil. nl
A» H whole, Mr. Davif.' hook i-. lull of ml.-ic.im' ml<.i ni.ilion. Tli'ie
!»• Mime diverged' y "I opinion on IMI.HII point-.. I'm •• • .nnplr, we
imi .1 know mod ill. in Wi ilo .r. yd Wllll !«•;•. nil lo I IM MI •.,,, r..i I ion ;m.l j.ci
HOIIIM I ,,l in, III. |M,II .. In, lit . In loic w <.m ..ill ly -oliilllilc tli.il llic |.
' '.ml ' li .i.l .1 ..... nop.,l\ ..I .1,1 m mi .11 ill . I ., I. m' .mil III ,il 'the h.noii .' .i.limni
nlialM.n M| id, .1 I. m. I u- .1 . IK . I . III. M nl ' f|, oij < oiii|i:ur wiili tin-, llir
. i.l. IM . Hi (lie i oil. .|.oi nl>- IK c of ill' yoiili-M-i | ), ,|,i n .. I .c. In III', III I II III C
i n ..I tin .iilmim .n.iiion of hilt ctUtct in GUmorgAn (pp. 102-3),
i, ii.. m,|,., n mi |.i ,. m HI. royal service by Jolm W;,lu
who .i.iitc.l liiicftreorHK An offi< i.il m ihr household ol I!M I ,.i .,i ll. i.i.,i.l
•;','. '•)•
!•'. i.l.i. will In,. I ....III. -.Ill-Ill In-.-. .,1 (I. llll) ilnc (,, ||,e I. Ml lll.ll Ml.
I ).i\ i, . |,.ll..vv . .m mi l,,i I m 1.1 1. pi. . . ili ill ., I l.y l.lul.li. in .m c-.il ly r.lltioli
ol In-. (. 'intittitt.iinil ///i/0ry, mid generally con/iiM. tin- 1-1 m ' .iilmmr.ii.i
ii..n ' IM wli.il I'mlcv.oi I ,,ni i itllt-d ' ii.ilional ailmim .n.ii ion,' I li.il i-., (lie
woik of ihr Mic.il |. ul. In .I. I..HIIIICHI . ,,| Mil,, i., im.il, chfUin i \ .mil
, M In i |IM i, i . M|,|,o.i .1 I., lli. I.M,I< ,,i i .MI 1. 1 1 in I mm. ill . M! ' ( OUfl .nlinim
ili.imi.ii, u.iiiliobfl, gnd KO i.iiih. Mr. Davicn prefers to oppOM
' -nil ..... I II HIMII ' IM ' IIMH , 1,1,1,1.' Thf | M Hill I . .1 II HI • .Illlclcll. e i,| I el III,
IM, Mr. D.IVM. linn.il know. Will, .mil, mil. nl, his whole lln-sJH l'»
.li |» H.I. in II|,MII ihr IMI, ili.ii llir .i.lmim .ii.iii.Hi M| ihr i oniiliy WAI I
.M 'I. nml\, m ulnih ihc \vi.ik i,l (he p iil.li. .in.l p. i ..nil i n .1 i 1 1 1 1 M n I -. WHK
(nexiii. il>l\ ml'ilumcil. 'I'h.H being »0, the .nlili.i.il ic.linlioii ol llir
i. i m • i.lmim .n n h.n ' i ..... M p. ii i of the machinery jars upon the reader M
N ll ll I. I. Ill .lull, .ll
No irvn-w (>! Mi I) ' hunk Wiuilil he ..... i|.lrir \\ hi. h l.nlol lo . .ill
.(lie Hi n, n lo I I ic \.i 1 1 1. M| I he .lp| n lulls ol ili M Illlli III-.. MM I .. I lln i I I.l \e
i IM i hi -. ii pi mi. ,1 I.. i..i . , .mil kogftbfll il«' v i"i in .1 n i-c i lory of adminiKtra-
tlve |H.n IM e MI^I-Mlll^ millU'lOllh ('Mini . M! ml.n .1 I Ii. \ ,h.ix\ • .iniMllgft
olhci llmi-.ll ..... i, -in- l.n-lli IM \\lii.h ihr UH Ol ihr |ni\v M*L tJld
CM n ..I (hi xi ih.il i.i.l. i , mi -hi In . .in ic. I in ln.ill.l-. ol Si. lie. As .1 xvhi.lr,
lh. \ ii.'i ,,nl\ ,.,n. HUH, I!M |n .nil, .Hi. .n M| the .l.ih ni.iil-. m.i.lc 111 Mi.
I) n,. .' > ..... k. Km .il ... imm.h the raw iiiaicnil I.H in.iny poiliblc inveuti-
II llll ...III, (l, III
HIM.X I..IINHTONS.
Scott : The Pictish Nation 57
THE PICTISH NATION : ITS PEOPLE AND ITS CHURCH. By Archibald B.
Scott, B.D. Pp. xiv, 560. 410. Edinburgh : T. N. Foulis. 1918.
253. net.
IN tin's interesting volume Mr. Scott pursues in greater detail and over a
wider field his researches in Celtic history, with especial reference as
before to the Picts of Alba. The origin and development of the Pictish
Church in what is now Scotland fills the greater part of his book, and a
very absorbing talc it is : but scarcely less so is the account of the desperate
struggle of the Picts and their successive kings against Angle, Dane, and
Gaidheal : in the end ;i losing struggle in which they went under : hut
in the course of which many events and personalities emerge from the
northern mists into the light of day.
Mr. Scott's own shorter works on St. Ninian and St. Moluag might be
said to form the basis on which these later studies have amplified them-
selves, and he has ransacked the treasuries of old Celtic Literature to
bring before us a lifelike picture of Pictish saints and warriors from the
fifth century to the ninth. There are shorter general chapters on the
language and customs of the people, and later on the Viking invasions and
the survival of the Cele De : but the central part of the book is concerned
at length with the founding of the Pictish Church in Galloway by
St. Ninian in the fifth century : its debt to St. Martin and his community
at Tours, and its history as the sole church of the Picts of Alba for four
hundred years and more, until it was gradually incorporated with the
Gaidhealic church after the fusion of the two kingdoms under Kenneth
MacAlpin. Mr. Scott gives account of many Lives of the Saints, and tells
of the foundation of other great Pictish communities such as those at
Glasgow, Culross and St. Andrews : and in lie-land at Kan^or and
Maghbile, intimately associated as they were with the church of Ninian
in Alba. He deals with many problems, and sheds light on varying and
disputed matters in the lives of Palladius and Paul He"n, St. Patrick,
St. Kcntigern, and others.
Mr. Scott makes also further deduction from the facts already known
about the Ptolemaic map of Britain : showing how the twisted position
assigned to Scotland has led to falsification of the extent of the work of
Ninian and his followers, and also of Columba, in Pictland. What we
should call lt't-\t Pictland was North for both Ptolemy and Bede, and
Drumalban the line, not of the so-called Grampians, but of the mountain
cli.un ninmii:'. Iroiu Loch Lomond to Hen Hee ; Ninian therefore
christianised £<?*/ Pictland (not South as Bede has it) : that is, East of
Drumalhan : and Columba's missionary journeys lay to the west of that
line, viz. the Gaidhealic border.
Further, the author emphasizes the significance of Columba's intro-
duction to the Pictish king by two great Pictish ecclesiastics, his con-
clusion being that St. Columba did not convert any extent of Pictish
country, nor its king, owing partly to the difficulty of language which did
not exist to the same degree between St. Ninian (a Briton) and the Picts.
After the fusion of the Gaidhealic and the Pictish churches, the
liaullu-.ils edited Pictish manuscripts in their own interest, ami as on the
58 Scott : The Pictish Nation
Continent of Europe * Scot ' came to stand for any Irishman, the Picts
tended in historical writings to become merged in the other branch of the
Celtic family, and thus to lose their identity.
Mr. Scott supports his various contentions by much archeological detail :
he gives useful tables of the Celtic Church communities with their origins,
founders, and approximate dates, as also of the parallel Scotic and Pictish
kings.
In the eighth century, when the organisation of the Pictish Church
was complete, came the Viking invasions, which presently made an end
of colleges, libraries and schools, and forced the ecclesiastics to flee for
their lives to the European Continent. The Celtic people that emerged
from these onslaughts were the Gaidheals, not the Picts : and with the
ruin of the latter, and their absorption by Scandinavians, Gaidheals, and
Angles, Mr. Scott's tale comes to an end.
Of the spirit which animated the early Pictish missionaries, and their
devoted zeal, he gives a glowing account : and his exhilarating enthusiasm
is infectious enough to incline the reader to condone his unsparing con-
demnation of everything Teutonic, though he cannot but wish the
unguarded ethnological deductions of the Preface had been omitted.
MARY LOVE.
THE HISTORY OF EUROPE FROM 1862 TO 1914, FROM THE ACCESSION
OF BISMARCK TO THE OUTBREAK OF THE GREAT WAR. By Lucius
Hudson Holt, Ph.D., Professor of English and History, United States
Military Academy, and Alexander Wheeler Chilton, Assistant Pro-
fessor of History, United States Military Academy. Pp. xvi, 611.
Demy 8vo. New York : The Macmillan Company. 145. net.
THE obscurity of the international situation in Europe previous to 1914
rendered it very difficult for a concise and clear account of the relations
between the Powers to be written. Any account given of the causes and
effects of such incidents as the Austrian annexation of Bosnia or the appear-
ance of the Panther at Agadir was of necessity tentative and disputable. The
revelations of the last five years with regard to German aims and national
characteristics have illuminated the whole field of modern history, and have
rendered a more authoritative and connected account of the complicated
international relationships both possible and desirable. The American
authors of this book write with the advantage of a full knowledge or
occurrences in Europe up to the end of 1917 ; their standpoint is one
which, to the British reader, will seem amply justified by facts, namely,
1 that the chief interest in international affairs in Europe during the half-
century preceding the outbreak of the Great War revolves about the
political ambitions and methods of the Prusso-German State.' They
commence their account from the year 1862 — significant in that it marked
the appointment of Bismarck to the Chancellorship of Prussia. When
Bismarck assumed office the Prussians were apparently an industrious,
unambitious power, content with their international position ; under his
guidance they embarked on a policy of aggression, which finally, after his
death, developed into the mad lust for world dominion, the revelation or
Holt and Chilton : History of Europe 59
which startled Europe in 1914. A clear, careful and interesting account
is given of the steps by which Bismarck established firstly Prussian
hegemony among the German states and then German hegemony in the
councils of Europe. The German pre-eminence established after 1870
was maintained throughout the period of the Russo-Turkish War and con-
solidated by the formation of the Triple Alliance in 1882. After the
adhesion of Italy to the Alliance France inevitably felt her isolation insup-
portable ; the next step is consequently the formation of a defence against
German hegemony by the accomplishment of an Entente between France
and Russia, and later between France and Britain — steps which had their
logical sequence in a rapprochment between Britain and Russia. The
influence of colonial rivalries and of the Turkish and Balkan questions on
the international situation are described in detail, and the story is finally
closed by an account of the negotiations preceding the outbreak of war in
August, 1914. The whole book is impartial and eminently clear; it is
thoroughly to be recommended as a readable history of the Europe of pre-
war days, written in the light of recent and sinister knowledge of German
policy and methods. W. D. ROBIESON.
LATIN EPIGRAPHY : AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LATIN
INSCRIPTIONS. By Sir John Edwin Sandys, Litt.D., F.B.A. With
fifty Illustrations. Cambridge: University Press. 1919. I2s.6d.net.
THIS manual is furnished with a very full guide to the literature of its
subject, though the bibliography is, perhaps, somewhat ill-balanced here
and there. Thus, the note to C.I.L. xiii. (p. xx) gives references to the
French regional collections, but says nothing of Haug and Sixt's work on
the inscriptions of Wurtemberg, or of the Rhine Museums catalogues by
Lehner (Bonn) and others ; Ruggiero's Dizionario is mentioned, but not
his Sylloge ; Haverfield's Chester catalogue, but not his Carlisle catalogue ;
and so on. However, considering the scope of the manual, one would
rather have the balance restored by excision than by addition.
But it is not on the bibliographical side that this handbook most invites
criticism. There are certain defects one would expect to find in a manual
of epigraphy not written by an epigraphist, and these the author's practised
skill in compilation has not enabled him to avoid. The choice of illustra-
tions and examples does not speak to any familiarity with Latin inscriptions,
but to what the author himself describes (rather oddly) as ' a first-hand
acquaintance with the general literature of the subject.' Even when he
remarks (p. 198) that on a weathered stone the horizontal strokes of certain
letters are often worn away, Sir John Sandys is not relying (apparently) on
his own observation, but on the authority of Hagenbuch in Orelli. The
fact that British inscriptions are rarely cited in the existing (foreign)
manuals is the reason, one must suppose, why so few find a place in this
book; but surely a British scholar, writing for British students, might have
ventured here to modify his authorities. The Cheshire Military Diploma,
for example, might have been illustrated instead of an Italian one (Fig. 49),
even if Daremberg-Saglio is more accessible than The British Museum. And
if British inscriptions are few, so also are inscriptions from the provinces akin
60 Sandys : Latin Epigraphy
to our own, while not many of the examples given are of the kind that
British students are specially concerned with. Indeed, there is not much
interest of any sort (as there might easily have been) in the subject-matter
of the 'sixty inscriptions exemplifying abbreviated phrases.' The author
explains that his work is intended for students whose interest is literary.
This may account for certain omissions, but much, even most, of the detail
does not answer to such a design. It is, in fact, hard to see what class of
student this book would suit. It is much easier to name the class of
student for whom an epigraphic manual in English really is required.
There are many interested in Roman imperial studies who should know
something of epigraphy as an historical instrument. These include archaeo-
logists who take part in our excavations and find themselves confronted
with new epigraphic documents of their own discovering, without having
had any opportunity for a regular training in epigraphy, such as is now
given at some of our universities. A manual which would help such
students to decipher, date and interpret inscriptions and employ them as
historical material would be really useful. But it would have to be written
by an epigraphist. S. N. MILLER.
FARQUHARSON GENEALOGIES. No. III. : EARLY FARQUHARSONS AND
CRAIGNIETY FAMILY. By A. M. Mackintosh. Pp. iv, 56. 8vo. (Im-
pression of 100 copies. Printed for the Annotator. Nairn : George
Bain.) 1918. 55.
MR. MACKINTOSH'S diligence in commentary and exposition upon the
BROUCHDEARG MS. of 1733 has on previous occasions been commended
in our columns (S.H.R. xi. 443; xii. 210). His present instalment edits
in six pages the text of the Farquharson pedigree from that MS., and
follows up with the critical notes on various steps of the descent. The
MS. starts the pedigree with the allegation that Farquhar Shaw, ' whose
name first gave rise to this surname,' came from Rothimurcus about 1435.
Apart from the problems of clan relationship, which we must leave to those
it concerns, we note the discussion of two interesting and more general
questions. First is an examination (cf. S.H.R. xv. 53) of the well-known
story of the ' Race of the Trough,' orphan captive children fed, according
to the story, ' from a long trough made for the purpose,' the date some-
where about 1527. Sir Walter Scott's statement that the orphans were
Farquharsons is very unwelcome to Mr. Mackintosh, who says ' Sir Walter
had no authority for introducing that name into his story,' and denies their
being Farquharsons. According to Chapman, whose MS. circa 1729
Scott is supposed to have consulted, the parentage of the orphans was
unknown. Another question debated is whether Finla Mor, killed at
Pinkie in 1547, could have had, as affirmed in an early genealogy, 'the
banner Royall to carry' in the battle, so that he fell 'with the same in his
hand.' Some considerations favouring this statement include a grant of
arms by the Lyon King in 1692 based upon it (compare the Grameid,
line 442). Clan Farquharson has a watchful guardian of its honours and
interests in Mr. Mackintosh, who shrewdly and boldly formulates both his
beliefs and his doubts. GEO. NEILSON.
Hamilton : Elizabethan Ulster 61
ELIZABETHAN ULSTER. By Lord Ernest Hamilton. Pp. 352 and Map.
8vo. London : Hurst and Blackett, Ltd. 1919. i6s net.
Too much cannot be known about the commencement and continuation
of the ' Plantation of Ulster,' which has rendered one province of Ireland
different in race and feeling from the rest, and we are grateful therefore
for this book, which is a narrative written currente calamo. Whether a
less modern style, which bears traces of haste and leaves the reader rather
breathless, would not have been a better vehicle, is a matter of opinion.
The book, for all that, has a value of its own. It has not enough
references to be of great historical weight, but the matter it has to deal
with, the plot and counterplot between the 'Irishry,' the Scottish High-
landers— McDonnells of the Glynns, — and the representatives of Queen
Elizabeth in Ireland, always attempting to increase the English in Ulster
by fresh settlements, makes it very interesting to read. The struggle in
Elizabeth's time lay between her Lords Deputies and other officers, her pet
Irish noble, Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and 'The O'Neill,' Tirlough
Luineach. Interwoven were the plots and plans of the tribes of
O'Donnell, Magennis, et hoc genus omne, and the too little known Scots-
Gaelic settlement of the McDonnells in Antrim. These at once fused
with the Irish, but until treated unwisely by Queen Elizabeth — jealous
of all things Scottish — were not originally very hostile to the English
influence.
It is curious to see how continuous was the traffic between Argyllshire
and Ireland, and how the power of the Earls of Argyll — through ladies of
his family — had spread in Ulster ; and the lives of Katharine Maclean,
Countess of Argyll, and of Lady Agnes Campbell, wife first of a
McDonnell then of an O'Neill, would make very tragic studies. The
writer tries to be fair to all parties. He points out that barbarous warfare
and land-wasting was the practice of the time, and not of one side only,
that although the Tudor rulers looked askance at Tanistry as a bad Irish
custom, their officials connived at it as a way of ruling and of making their
fortunes. The book ends with the collapse of the Spanish invasion, the
submission of Tyrone, the death of the Queen, and Tyrone's flight in
1607 under her successor, when the real Plantation of Ulster from Scotland
(begun by Sir Hugh Montgomery, James Hamilton, and Con. McNeil
Oge in 1603) took place. It is a stirring period and full of extraordinary
episodes. We wish we could say that it was easy to understand, but the
Irish customs (many extinguished by the rival English culture) alone make
it difficult. The continuous and contemporaneous marriages of the Chiefs,
and the want of certainty as to their succession, enhances this. Nor does
this book simplify the difficulties. The titles given are not always the
same and are sometimes incorrect (e.g. there was no ' Lord of the Isles ' in
1570). There are no pedigrees to throw light either on the Irish Chiefries
or the Scottish Clansettlers. There are too few dates, and there is no
index.
A. FRANCIS STEUART.
62 Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND, session
1917-1918. Pp. xxx, 295. 4to. Edinburgh : Printed for the
Society. 1918.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL objects studied here include fibulae, cists, pottery, cup-
marks, a stone cresset, a cruise, and food-vessel urns, as well as some
medieval and more modern articles, such as Celtic cross-slabs at St. Andrews,
pieces of needlework from Dalmahoy and from Rushbrooke Hall, Suffolk,
four ancient Scottish standards and a thirteenth century chapter seal of
Glasgow.
In his notice of the standards of Cavers, Keith Earl Marischal, Bellenden
and Marchmont, Sir James Balfour Paul discusses the heraldry and
lettering. The needlework from Rushbrooke is a ' cloth of estate '
supposed to have been worked by Mary of Scots while in England.
Mr. W. Balfour Stewart shows that the royal tradition is in every way
probable. The tapestry at Dalmahoy is collated by Mr. R. Scott Moncrieff,
with pieces from the late Sir Noel Paton's collection, and a date circa 1560
is suggested for both. Dr. Hay Fleming adds to his already long list of
similar stones at St. Andrews ; the three now described, characteristically
decorated, were, like many others, discovered in the burial ground north
of St. Rule's tower and chapel, and east of the east gable of the cathedral.
Dr. James Primrose concludes that the chapter seal, circa 1280, is a rude
diminutive sketch of Glasgow cathedral, with a figure of Bishop Wishart
added, but unfortunately he cannot furnish fresh reasons for this rather
robust interpretation. Sir James Balfour Paul's analysis of the connection
between Scottish saints and fairs brings out some useful facts about these
market dedications. Mr. Storer Clouston illustrates old Orkney armorials
of the families of Halcro, Flett, Menzies, Fraser, Cragy and Sinclair.
Dr. George Macdonald presents an elaborate and carefully revised list of
Roman coins found in Scotland.
A paper on Agricola and the Roman Wall^ by Professor Haverfield, the
latest of so many learned and acute constructive studies of Roman Britain
from the same pen, cannot fail to be a mournful reminder of the great loss
which his recent death has occasioned. No student in Europe had a
greater mastery of Roman archaeology, and so far as Britain, and especially
England, is concerned, his wonderful store of historical knowledge and
epigraphic science, balanced and buttressed by his experience in actual
exploration of Roman sites, gave him a place easily foremost among the
specialists on Roman Britain of his own or any previous epoch.
He was a great scholar of antiquities, taken from us while still relatively
in his prime.
THE BOOK OF THE LEWS : THE STORY OF A HEBRIDEAN ISLE. By W.
C. MacKenzie, F.S.A. Scot. Pp. xv, 276. Demy 8vo. With 23
Illustrations. Paisley: Alexander Gardner. 1919. I2s.6d.net.
THE author, who has done excellent work in the same field before, being
a native, brings to the work an enthusiasm of local patriotism akin to that
of Hugh Miller for Cromarty. Mr. MacKenzie had already given a
MacKenzie : Book of the Lews 63
regular chronological history of the Highlands and Isles, and now he dis-
cusses in a series of l Historical Sketches ' the chief periods in the story of
the Lews. The book is for the general reader, and attractive in style.
He does not quote Norse Gaelic or Latin passages of his authorities
though he freely gives references in notes, but he lucidly and racily states
the conclusions he draws from them, which, though in some cases novel or
open to question, are always interesting.
The book ought to have a wide circulation among those interested in
Highland history or in the Long Island, which at present has a good share
of public attention while political economists await with friendly interest
the result of Lord Leverhulme's experiment.
The sketches begin with the Norsemen in Lewis, as before them
there is no mention of it in written history, and to them are owing the
great majority of its place-names. Next, sketches deal with the Macleods,
long the Lords of Lewis, with the ill-fated Fife adventurers and the history
of the island's greatest industry — the fishings. The rule of Cromwell and
his fort at Stornoway are sketches showing great research, and that on the
period of Seaforth proprietorship gives occasion for a recital of the Stewart
risings. Then he deals with the religion and the daily life of the people.
In the latter he says, * We have no contemporary statement of rent and taxa-
tion in the Hebrides during the sixteenth century.' But there is extant
and quoted in Old Ross-shire a tax roll for all the north of 1612, giving
* M'Cleod Lewis and all lands yr of xl lib.' It gives Cromarty at the same
amount, though it has not a hundredth of the area, and Belladrum,
6 pleuches (about 480 acres), is given at ^2 I2s. 6d. or one-fifteenth of the
tax to one eight-hundredth of the area, showing the comparatively low
average of Lewis land. The chapters on the Callernish Standing Stones,
the Brochs and the Isle of Pigmies do ample justice to the island's prehistoric
remains.
The work is well illustrated, but the sketch map of Lewis might with
great advantage have been on a much larger scale, so as to show all places
mentioned, and it would have been a very great help to the description of
Callernish if there had been reproduced Mr. James Fraser's plan and illus-
tration from his paper in the Transactions of the Inverness Scientific Society.
W. MACGILL.
HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865. By James Ford Rhodes,
LL.D., D.Litt. Pp. xxii, 454. Demy 8vo. New York : The
Macmillan Company. 1919. 12s. 6d. net.
DR. RHODES sets out to write a history of America during the war. His
viewpoint is Washington, not the battlefield ; the main heroic figure is
Lincoln, and the changing atmosphere of Washington throughout the four
years the war continued is faithfully and skilfully described. As a well-
documented account of the political and social situation Dr. Rhodes's
history is of great value. His research has been profound, so profound,
indeed, that his pages tend to become overloaded with avoidable detail.
The book is a mine of information on such subjects as inflation of
64 Rhodes : History of the Civil War
currency and conscription and the various social and economic difficulties
which beset both North and South. The delicate problem of the relations
between the Northern States and Britain is treated with sympathy and
understanding.
But the reader who turns to this volume in the expectation of finding a
concise and ordered history of the campaigns between the Northern and
Southern States will be disappointed. Dr. Rhodes has much to say of
military operations, and his history iis provided with many excellent maps,
but he fails to describe in any detail either armies or armaments, he
neglects the geography on which tactics depend, and he leaves the reader
without any clear idea of the strategical development of the successive
campaigns. Apparently, as a layman, he considers he is disqualified from
pronouncing on problems which are within the domain of the soldier.
Yet his obvious learning and knowledge of the authorities would have
enabled him, had he so desired, to present a readable and logical account of
the various steps which led to the hemming in and surrender of the
Southern forces. As it is, the account given must be confusing to anyone
without some previous knowledge of the struggle. A good index and an
excellent bibliography are appended.
ARCH^EOLOGIA AELIANA. Third series. Vol. XV. Pp. xxx, 224. 410.
Printed for the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
1918.
THE Antiquaries of Newcastle-on-Tyne have * carried on ' through the
war with a vigour only whetted by the restraints and obstacles of the time.
Yet signs proclaim a certain shortage of contributions. Mr. Crawford
Hodgson is responsible for no fewer than five biographical papers, the
subjects being John Horsley, the historian, Richard Dawes, a Newcastle
schoolmaster, George Tate, historian of Alnwick, the seventh Duke of
Northumberland, and perhaps most interesting of all, Canon William
Greenwell. These notes on distinguished Northumbrian lives are replete
with genealogical lore and personal facts, gleaned with ingenuity and
persistence, and often rescued from very evanescent and casual repositories.
Professor Haverfield, dealing with the altars to the Di Veteres, a common
cult along the Hadrianic Wall, concludes from readings HVETERI and
VHETERI that the name cannot be the Latin adjective vetus, but is a
German word. But the major purpose of Prof. Haverfield is to group the
forty Northumbrian examples of this suggestive type.
Mr. C. H. H. Blair continues the grand catalogue of Durham Seals,
dealing in this considerable instalment with seals of ecclesiastics, hospitals,
universities and monasteries. One of these is the extremely interesting
seal of Baliol Hall, Oxford, of which Mr. Blair has written a very care-
fully detailed description.
The portrait of Canon Greenwell which illustrates Mr. Crawford
Hodgson's valuable memorial sketch is here reproduced by permission.
GEO. NEILSON.
THE REV. WILLIAM GREENWELL, D.C.L., F.R.S., F.S.A.
From the painting by Sir A. S. Cope, A.R.A.
Morris : Stirling Merchant Gild 65
THE STIRLING MERCHANT GILD AND LIFE OF JOHN COWANE, FOUNDER
OF COWANE'S HOSPITAL IN STIRLING. By David B. Morris, Town
Clerk, Stirling. Pp. xiv, 367. 8vo. Stirling : Jamieson & Munro,
Ltd. 1919.
ANYONE who knows Stirling knows the fine old Cowane's Hospital or Gild
Hall, but it is only when one has read this very complete study that one
learns to what and to whom it owed its being. Stirling was one of the
old burghs of Scotland, four of which, Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Berwick,
and Stirling, had a code of law, the Leges £)uatuor Burgorum, as early as
the time of King David I. The town had a charter from King Alexander
II. in 1226, and the Gildry was then a going concern. The author points
out the historical differences between the Gilds in Scotland and the Guilds
in England, one important result of which was to prevent the settlement
of Lombard bankers and Jews in the former country. He also recounts
the usual trouble with * unfreemen,' and the constant struggle with the
4 crafts,' which were the cost of the progress of all such communities.
Stirling conquered most of its local rivals, quashing their fairs and otherwise
vanquishing them. The Gildry had a high estate. It had hautboys ; it
had official robes ; and the Dean of Gild's ring was perhaps given by King
David II. It tried its members for wearing * bonnets,' and exercised very
salutary discipline, as well as dispensed charities. It was this last category
which leads one on to the exhaustive life of John Cowane, one of Stirling's
best of sons and citizens, whose biography and friendly connections are
given to us with a delightful wealth of detail.
Born in Stirling about 1570, he died there in 1633. He held every
office which was desirable, from Dean of Gild to M.P., and ruled well,
and saw everything that was to be seen in his time. He (by his brother's
piety) founded in 1634 the hospital for * tuelf decayed gildbroder,' and we
are told that the Town Council accepted the gift, giving God thanks
'quha movit the said umquhile Johannes mynd to sa gude a worke.' The
writer shows how good the work was. He tells too of the causes of John
Cowane's wealth, his loans to his well-born ' friends,' and his privateering,
and how he gave his ships cto fight the Germans.' He traces his
genealogy, his relics, and his possessions, which include a * Taed Stane,'
now located at Kirkcudbright, and his memorials. This book is a noble
tribute to his excellent memory.
HISTORICAL PORTRAITS, 1700-1850. The Lives by C. R. L. Fletcher,
formerly Fellow of All Souls and Magdalen Colleges. The Portraits
chosen by Emery Walker, F.S.A., with an Introduction by C. F. Bell.
2 vols. Vol. I, pp. xliii, 268, with 114 portraits. Vol. II, pp. viii,
332, with 137 portraits. 4to. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1919.
I2s. 6d. net each volume.
THESE two volumes complete a work which was begun many years ago.
The volume of Historical Portrait sy 1400-1600, was published in 1909,
and the second series covering the years 1600-1700, appeared in 1911 (see
S.H.R. VI, 401, and IX., 332). The Lives for the second series were
66 Fletcher : Historical Portraits
contributed partly by Mr. H. B. Butler, and partly by Mr. Fletcher. For
the two new volumes Mr. Fletcher is their sole author, but with this
exception, the responsibility for the selection of the portraits and the
writing of the Introduction and of the Lives, remains the same
throughout.
During recent years, students of portraiture have received much assist-
ance not only from books dealing solely with the subject such as the great
Catalogue of the National Gallery, but also from general works like the
illustrated edition of Green's History of the English People, and Mr. Firth's
wonderful collection in his edition of Macaulay's History of England. Such
special studies as Mrs. Lane Poole's Catalogue of Oxford Portraits are also
of peculiar value. But this scheme which the Clarendon Press has now
happily carried to completion is the most useful as well as the most compre-
hensive work of its kind which has been issued for very many years. The
reproduction of the portraits have not the beauty of those in Lodge, and
those in the present series are less well reproduced than the portraits in the
first and second volumes issued ten years ago. There is a purply-blue tint
in the prints which detracts from their beauty, and also from their life-like
appearance, but it may be that time will improve these reproductions as
it has improved many of the originals.
On the other hand, the excellence of the choice of portraits, and the
wide range of interest which they cover, as well as the value of the
biographical sketches will for long make this work a standard work of
reference, which ought to be in every Public Library of importance, and
to which successive generations of students will turn with gratitude.
In these two new volumes many of the portraits are, as in the former
volumes, full-page plates, while other plates combine two or four portraits.
By far the larger number come from the National Gallery, but a con-
siderable proportion are portraits which still hang in the historic collections
which the artistic taste of former generations provided with care and
with pride. So many of these collections are now being scattered that
there is additional reason for gratitude to the Clarendon Press and to
Mr. Emery Walker for preserving this very valuable record of the moving
spirits of true last five centuries.
A SOURCE BOOK OF AUSTRALIAN HISTORY. Compiled by Gwendolen H.
Swinburne, M.A. Pp. viii, 211. 8vo. With a map. London:
G. Bell & Sons, Ltd. 1919. 5s. net.
WE are given here accounts of different phases of Australian History
Geographical, including fine and strenuous exploration and land travel,
and General History. The latter includes the discovery (or rediscovery
after Torres) of Tasmania by Tasman, and goes down to the landing at
Gallipoli, and 4 what Anzac means ' in the Great War. The original
sources are all interesting ; but one must not forget they do not include
everything. For example we are given an indignant description of the
planning of the infant town of Adelaide by an early settler of South
Australia, but with no indication of how successful the scheme ultimately
became when controversy died away.
Wallace : The Maseres Letters 67
THE MASERES LETTERS, 1766-1768. Edited, with an Introduction, Notes
and Appendices, by W. Stewart Wallace, M.A. Pp. x, 135. 8vo.
Oxford : University Press. 1919. 5s. 6d. net.
FRANCIS MASERES, an Englishman, born of pure Huguenot descent, was
sent out to Quebec in 1766 as Attorney General. Speaking French, he
was best equipped of the early officials for intercourse with the French-
Canadians ; but against that there was the barrier of religion, he being
a stout Protestant. Still he became an important link between Canada
and London, whither, through religious difficulties, he retired in 1769,
and died there in his ninety-third year in 1824. He tried to act as Mentor
to the Government in Canadian affairs, and the Editor thinks usually for
good. The letters he wrote during the three years, and very critical years
they were for Canada, are here reprinted, and are valuable as they are full
of information and outspoken comments. They are very well placed
before the studious reader.
A GENTLE CYNIC : being a Translation of the Book of Koheleth, by
Morris Jastrow,jun., Ph.D., LL.D. Philadelphia: Lippincott Co. 1919
THE writer of this book intends to treat the * Book of Job' and the 'Song
of Songs ' in the same way as he has here done * Ecclesiastes,' and we hope
he will find it worth doing. In this recension, even though he may have
purified the text, we cannot regard the new translation as an improvement
in diction on the old. Professor Jastrow holds that the book of ' Koheleth'
is * a strange book in a sacred canon ' written by King Solomon, according
to tradition, but really much later, and interlarded with glosses by com-
mentators to make the work more moral from their point of view. The
author strips the book of these emendations, and professes to restore the
original text.
COMMEMORATION OF THE CENTENARY OF THE BIRTH OF JAMES RUSSELL
LOWELL. 410. New York. 1919.
THIS is an account of the Symposium held in New York under the
auspices of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, February 19-22,
1919, in honour of one of America's great Men of Letters. It includes
excellent speeches in memoriam by Elihu Root, John Galsworthy,
M. Hutton, and Brander Matthews ; Literary exercises by, among others
Alfred Noyes and Stephen Leacock. Due mention was made of Lowell's
paternal English Stock, and one speaker, at least, pointed out the Orcadian
descent of his Mother. Her progenitors being Spences and Traills of
Westness.
THE AMERICAN MUNICIPAL EXECUTIVE. By R. M. Story. Pp. 231.
University of Illinois : Urbana. $1.25.
STUDENTS of * civics ' may with advantage turn to this, which is one of
the University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences. It traces the develop-
ment of * mayoralty ' in the United States, finding the stem in the English
pattern of mayor, but shows the American new departures especially in
68 Current Literature
(i) the veto widely given to the transatlantic variant ; (2) the necessity of
his ' approval ' of numerous measures ; (3) * the drift towards executive
domination'; and (4) the recent new types, the 'mayor-commissioner'
and the ' city manager,' which are current exemplifications of the devolu-
tion of large civic authority to individuals, who, on the German plan, have
professional qualifications for the task of administration. The mayor
system, says Dr. Story, is not only on its trial, but 'has before it a struggle
for existence.' Some Americanisms and spellings attract attention, ' thru/
* tho,' ' brot,' among the latter ; while among the former, * blanket ' appears
to be used to cover general powers not excluded.
The Household of a Tudor Nobleman, by Paul van Brunt Jones, Ph.D.
(University of Illinois Studies, vol. vi. No. 4, Urbana, 1917) is a
useful piece of work by a young American scholar, who, under Professor
E. P. Cheyney's. direction, has put together a composite description of a
great nobleman's household in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries from
the numerous printed accounts available. The medievalist will be struck
with the continuity of the medieval aristocratic establishment into the
period which is generally supposed to have destroyed the power of the old
nobility, and even with its recrudescence in the case of new men, such as
William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who kept house like a Percy or a Neville.
Mr. Jones has done his work well : his clearness, scholarship, and method
leave little to be desired. A little more care in putting place names in
their modern forms would have been desirable. But the side of the book
that wants most strengthening is the lack of emphasis to the adminis-
trative as opposed to the domestic side of the nobleman's household. We
are told more of what he ate and where he ate it, than we are of how he
managed his estates and his domestics. More constant reference to the
analogies presented by the government of the royal household would here
have been useful. Henry VII. and Henry VIII. to some extent governed
their realm through the administrative department called the King's
Chamber. Was there nothing in the chamber or wardrobe of the noble
of the period that corresponded to the King's domestic administrative
offices? How then did the noble rule his estates, and control the huge
following that attended him ? Even the store of arms and armour which
Dr. Jones notes in the armoury of the Tudor nobleman's household had
sometimes its use. So accessible a source as Bacon's Essays records as
* almost peculiar to England ' the ' state of free servants and attendants upon
noblemen and gentlemen ' as much ' conducing unto martial greatness.'
T. F. TOUT.
For a series of Helps for Students of History^ published at sixpence each,
which the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge has undertaken,
the editorial service of Mr. C. Johnson and Mr. J. P. Whitney is a
guarantee of good contributors and good work. Mr. R. C. Fowler starts
with * Episcopal Registers of England and Wales.' Mr. F. J. C. Hearn-
shaw follows on ' Municipal Records.' Mr. R. L. Poole describes
* Medieval Reckonings of Time.' Mr. Johnson takes for his own
province * The Public Record Office.' These works cover lightly a wide
Current Literature 69
field. Sometimes one feels that the Englishman has a remarkable faculty
of not looking over his own garden wall. On municipal records, for
example, it might have been noted how far behind Scotland the English
boroughs were in publishing their records. Our old Scottish Burgh
Records Society deserved well of its time, antedating in its publications,
by thirty years, the admirable work of Miss Mary Bateson, Mr. W. H.
Stevenson, and Mr. Ballard on the archives of the chief English boroughs.
The latter as compared with the former show a great advance of method
on the modern editorial lines of exposition, a function which Sir James
Marwick and his collaborators fifty years ago scarcely considered as falling
definitely into their task. Mr. Poole's medieval data, presented simply and
clearly, embrace in outline the chief computations in use in the middle
ages, for many elements of which he shows the origins. Numerous
instances of complexity show the traps for the unwary computer of day,
month, year, era, or indiction, including the calendar full moon, which is
not guaranteed to be true to fact. Mr. Johnson's sketch neatly sum-
marises and classifies the infinite contents of the Public Record Office,
explaining the relationship with Parliament, Exchequer, and the Law
Courts, from which the records came. This new venture of the S.P.C.K.
merits welcome.
The English Historical Review for July opens with Mr. William Foster's
account of the acquisition of St. Helena, and its preliminary fortification in
May, 1659, by Captain John Dutton, acting under orders of the East India
Company. The development of the inner cabinet of George II., 1739-
1741, is dealt with by Mr. R. R. Sedgwick, who shows how regular and
formal its meetings grew during those years. A laborious and invaluable
task has been accomplished by Dr. W. Farrer in the preparation of an
' Outline Itinerary of King Henry the First.' On principles akin to those
of Eyton's well-known Itinerary of Henry II., Dr. Farrer has calendared
all Henry's charters, and all chronicle references available to prove his
movements ; and the result is a wonderful body of new relationships of the
documents, the places of granting, the witnesses, circumstances, occasions,
and dates of multifarious writs and transactions. This first instalment of
the Itineraiy embraces 378 entries between the years noo and 1117. It
is scarcely too much to say that the complete work will be virtually a new
chronicle of Henry I., accomplished for a very dark and difficult reign in a
manner which, in its modern method with extended possibilities of research,
outstrips even the monumental performance of Eyton forty years ago for
the life and time of the second Henry. Rev. H. E. Salter has ferreted out
some fresh documentary evidences concerning that piquant and important
personage, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and his residence in the neighbourhood
of Oxford between 1129 and 1151.
History prospers under Professor Pollard's ferule. Mr. Norman Baynes
is subtly suggestive and finely interesting in a compact, much-referenced,
and closely reasoned essay on * Greek Religion and the Saviour King.'
He traces the course of recent historical studies of the Oriental phases of
European concepts of divinity. An old tribulation, 'The Evils of
7° Current Literature
Examinations,' is discussed by Professor Firth. The present reviewer is
still young enough to rejoice that this learned 'examiner re-examined'
favours for history (i) a limited access to books at examinations ; and (2)
intimation of one half the questions to the candidates beforehand. Mr.
Geoffrey Callender in a revision of the sea fight of the Revenge in 1591, on
the whole sides with the doughty Sir Richard Grenville rather than with
his more cautious captain and master of the ship in the matter of the
policy at first of retiral and at last of surrender.
The French Quarterly : Manchester at the University Press : Volume I,
Nos. 1-3. The French Professors who conceived this project, and the
Manchester University Press which has enabled it to be realised, deserve
every encouragement. A publication of this kind has many difficulties to
face. It will not attract readers who have access to the leading French
periodicals, and it is apt to become a vehicle for the expression of the views
of special political and literary movements, the merits of which the
uninformed reader is not able to estimate. On the other hand, the
number of readers who keep in touch with French periodical literature, is
limited, and the Editors have managed on the whole to avoid the second
difficulty. The contributions by Mm. Boutroux and D'Estournelles de
Constant are inevitable and welcome, but the most solid feature of the
French Quarterly is to be found in the Parities which contain a number
of interesting literary articles of the solid kind which one associates with
The Modern Language Quarterly. The reviews and bibliography are
interesting and useful. The first three numbers of the French Quarterly
justify the hope that, if sufficient support is obtained from contributors and
readers, success may be achieved.
The preparation is announced of a General History from Antiquity to
Modern Times under the direction of MM. Halphen and Sagnac. The
work will be in twenty volumes, and will be published by Alcan. An
interesting notice is devoted to the fifth volume of the fascinating work of
the late M. Pierre Duhem, Le systeme du monde, histoire des doctrines cosmo-
logiques de Platan a Copernic. The latter number contains an obituary
notice of M. Gaston Bonet-Maury, <le plus aimable des hommes et le
meilleur des amis.' M. Bonet-Maury, who was Secretary of the French
branch of the Franco-Scottish Society and an honorary graduate in Divinity
of Glasgow University, was a contributor to this Review. The late Dr.
Neville-Figgis is not unfairly judged : ' II a remud beaucoup d'idees, mais
sans rien creuser a fond ; sa personne a etc" sup£rieure a ses Merits.'
In The Anglo-French Review (London : Dent & Son, Ltd., monthly
2s. 6d.) for July, Andre" Lichtenberger, in a fantasy after Kipling, not only
makes Mowgli speak French, but sends him to the front, where again he
hunts, never to return among men. Mr. Lewis Melville prints fresh
letters of Beckford about his youthful mystifications, but chiefly on Vathek.
M. Henri Malo utilises his knowledge of the conaires of Dunkirk in an
account, with many new details, of the voyage of Prince Charles Edward
to Scotland in 1 745 in the Du Teillay, (as — perhaps correctly — he names
the vessel familiar to us as the Doutelle\ as well as of the subsequent marine
Current Literature 71
part played by the French ships and sailors in the expedition, down to the
defeated Prince's return in 1746 on the Heureuse to Roscoff.
The Juridical Review for July opens with Lord Guthrie's estimate of
R. L. Stevenson's personality and character. The article is only a first
instalment, but the incomplete appreciation seeks to reconcile the bohemian
who was on the surface in Stevenson with the puritan who was beneath.
A facsimile of a charming letter to * Gummy ' would of itself attract the
admirers of R. L. S., whose portrait, for once conventional in wig and
gown, presented to Lord Guthrie by his * old comrade,' appears as frontis-
piece. A very technical, but copiously collected, analysis and contrast of
Jus (a ratio for judges) and Lex (a command to subjects) in Roman law, is
an anonymous compendium of historical and juristic development.
The 3 ist Bulletin of Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, is Economics,
Prices, and the War, by Mr. W. A. Mackintosh (Jackson Press : Kingston,
pp. 15). While denying that economic theory has gone to pieces, the
essay confirms the view of some and the suspicion of many that the price
charged to the consumer has little logical relation to the price paid to the
producer. Two basic reasons of discontent during the war are given :
(i) the consumer's knowledge that prices were rarely beyond the dealer's
control ; and (2) that rising prices induced unequal distribution of the
burden of war. Statistics of excess-profit taxation would, it is urged, give
surest light and guidance as to where the shoe pinched, and where the
profits went wrong.
Although a little reduced in size, the Somersetshire Archaeological and
Natural History Society Proceedings during the year 1918 (pp. Ixxviii, 124)
may be cited as proving the vitality of antiquarian work and thought in an
English county while the great War was being brought to its stern close.
The transactions represent all classes of study. The Dean (Dr. Armitage
Robinson) of Wells, collates the foundation charter and other documents
of Witham Charterhouse, founded by Henry II. circa 1181-1182.
Dr. A. C. Fryer describes and extensively illustrates the monumental
effigies of thirteenth and fourteenth century civilians, male and female, in
the shire. A paper by Prebendary Harbin on a land-charter area 1300 is
posthumously edited. Short papers deal with architectural points — * two
early English responds,' a piscina and part of a reredos ; and a wider theme,
the ' Heronries of Somerset,' is dealt with from Dr. Wiglesworth's com-
bined standpoints of aq antiquary and an ornithologist. His horror at the
suggestion of possible destruction to the ancient heronry of Pixton will be
shared by every archaeologist to whom the broad-winged, heavy, slow, yet
powerful flight of the heron is a sight of never failing charm in the
landscape of our river valleys.
Old Lore Miscellany of Orkney, Shetland, Caithness, and Sutherland
(January, 1919, vol. vii. Index) is the terminal part of a very useful Viking
Society collection, edited by Alfred W. Johnston and Mrs. Amy Johnston.
An index of subjects, as well as of places and names, greatly facilitates
reference. Mr, George Bain, Wick, has made the index very intelligently.
72 Current Literature
The Future (July- August, 1919) is the official organ of the English
Language Union, an association ' to promote the study of the English
language in foreign countries.' Popular in aim, it has portraits and pic-
tures, and its matter, though scrappy and not well focussed, includes
several excellent quotations.
The Bookman (New York: G. H. Doran Co., 35 cents) for May is a
favourable sample of that light, bright, and comprehensive literary journal.
There are no profound articles, but F. Dilnot's sketch of Philip Gibbs will
gratify many British readers of that vivid war-correspondent ; Dr. D. J.
Hill's survey of Dr. Egan's experiences often years on the German frontier
as U.S. Ambassador to Denmark is enlightening, and the ' Gossip Shop '
has lively wares.
Tale Review (April, 1919) blends much contrary thought, often in forms
of airy banter. One of the best examples of this is the late Randolph
Bourne's 'History of a Literary Radical,' which cleverly and refreshingly
sums up, not without satire, the shifts of opinion on the classics and the
study of them. Articles on Henry Adams, and on the * Chronicles of
America' contain penetrative criticisms of United States method in history.
In the Iowa Journal of History and Politics for April appears a survey by
C. R. Aurner of the movement in that State since 1857 f°r f°rmal educa-
tion in the principles, art, and practice of self-government. The demand
for 'Civics' — that the community should be taught citizenship, including
local history — is styled ' a great text for all Americans.'
The numbers of the Revue Historique for March-April and May-June
contain a further instalment of M. Louis Halphen's weighty examination
of the history of Charlemagne, in which the learned archivist studies the
sources available for the history of the conquest of Saxony. In two articles
M. Maurice Courant provides an interesting article of the history of
Siberia during the period from the Russian colonisation in the seventeenth
century, to the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The ' Bulletin
Historique' in the latter number is devoted to recent works on the history
of the Low Countries, and that in the earlier number to Roman antiquities.
Mention may be made of the publication of the first volume of M. Montau-
son's Bibliographic g/n/ra/e des travaux palethnologiques et arch/ologiques
(Leroux), which promises to be an indispensable work of reference. An
appreciative review is devoted to the last work of the late M. Vidal de la
Blache on La France de FEsty which will form a worthy companion to
the distinguished author's contribution to Lavisse, and there is an estimate
of the Private Correspondence of Earl of Granville.
The
Scottish Historical Review
VOL. XVIL, No. 66 JANUARY, 1920
The Causes of the Highland Emigrations of
1783-1803
THE first great period of Highland emigration ended in I7751
with the outbreak of the American War of Independence.
Then followed a perceptible pause, not broken until the Treaty
of Versailles, which formed the starting-point of a fresh movement.
The emigration proceeded, not in a steady unbroken stream,
but in waves, separated from each other by intervals of com-
parative inactivity. It was extraordinarily active between 1786
and 1790 ; it slackened2 again during the early years of the
Wars of the Revolution, which provided a temporary alternative
for the discontented, or, as one contemporary put it, ' changed
the coat of those who emigrated ' ; while it reached a fever heat
during the opening years of the new century.
The new phase differs in many respects from that which
preceded the American War, most noticeably in the different
social status of the bulk of the emigrants. This difference can
of course be over-emphasised. Tacksmen, the instigators of the
movement of the seventies, still existed in many parts of the
Highlands and Islands, and some certainly emigrated after 1783
for reasons similar to those moving their fellows before 1775.
So also, the independent emigration of the lower classes, the
characteristic mark of the new period, had its parallels earlier in
1 See Scottish Historical Review xvi, p. 280, ' The Highland Emigration of 1770.'
2 Caledonian Mercury, March 151)1, 1792. Walker, Econ. History of the Hebrides
and Highlands of Scotland, 1808.
S.H.R. VOL. XVII. F
74 Miss Margaret I. Adam
the century. Still, in the main, it is true to say that before 1775
the chief impulse to emigrate came from above, and the people
most affected were the semi-aristocratic holders of large farms;
after 1783 the impulse was from beneath, and it was the peasant
class whose diminished numbers marked the force of the new
movement.
As in the previous phase of emigration, it is neither easy nor
possible to get precise figures. The Old Statistical Account
mentions definitely the departure of four thousand persons
between 1785 and 1793, but it also abounds in vague references
to emigration from parishes for which no exact details are given.
Additional data supplied by the Caledonian Mercury and the Scots
Magazine of the corresponding years brings the total nearer six
thousand.
For the first three years of the nineteenth century some exact
figures are given by Robert Brown,1 Sheriff Substitute of Western
Inverness-shire. According to his statement, between 1801 and
1 803 twenty-three ships left for America with Highland emigrants,
carrying altogether five thousand, three hundred and ninety-one
persons on board. Of these vessels all but one sailed from
Highland or Island ports.
Brown's figures are corroborated by the engineer Telford
writing in the Scots Magazine of May 1803, and there seems no
reason to doubt their substantial reliability. Allowing then for
some emigration during the early part of the war, the total
number of Highland emigrants between 1782 and 1803 cannot
have been less than twelve thousand, and may have considerably
exceeded it.
To turn now to the causes of this upheaval, the suggestions
made by contemporaries resolve themselves into attempts to
explain two different things. The impulse to emigrate is the
product of two factors — the desire or necessity of the emigrant
to leave the home-land, and his willingness to go to the new one.
The restlessness of the late eighteenth century Highlanders
naturally supplies an essential condition for the movement of
population, but the restlessness might, quite well, have taken
other forms than that of emigration to America. There are
thus two things to be explained, the causes that lay at the root of
the Highland discontent and the special reasons that led to the
drift of population westwards.
1 Brown's Strictures and Remarks on the Earl of Selkirk's Observations on the
Present State of the Highlands of Scotland, 1806.
Highland Emigrations of 1783-1803 75
In this last sense the emigration of the late eighteenth century
is not particularly difficult to explain. Two powerful forces were
at work, the growing familiarity with the New World, and the
increasing commercial importance of the trade in emigrants.
To the poorer Highlander of the first half of the eighteenth
century, America had been hardly even a name ; to the Highlander
of the eighties and nineties it had become a land of promise, a
place above all capable of satisfying the land hunger for which
Scotland itself had failed to provide a remedy. This changed
attitude was the natural outcome of direct channels of communi-
cation being opened up between the Highlands and the colonies,
the three chief contributory agencies being the Highland regiments,
the Jacobite exiles, and the small tenants who had followed their
tacksmen masters in the emigration of the seventies. ;
Highland soldiers who had served in the Canadian operations,
or the Hudson campaigns of 1757, were generally given the
option of taking up land in America. Some did, and formed the
nucleus of future Highland settlements. Others returned home,
and familiarised their own people with the possibilities of the
land beyond the seas. The Jacobite refugees and the pioneers
of 1760 and 1770 acted in a similar way. Many of them kept
up an active correspondence with their native places, and thus
America came to be a household word in even the remotest
of Highland glens. The parish ministers writing in the Old
Statistical Account continually mention the letters from abroad as
being one of the strong inducements to further emigration.
Probably the best illustration of the importance of this factor
is to be found in the consistency with which emigrants from the
same district in the Highlands sought the same part in America.
The war affected but did not destroy this tendency. Many of
the Highlanders established in America were loyalists, and hence
subsequently refugees, a fact which diverted their stream of
followers from the Carolinas and the banks of the Hudson to
the St. Lawrence and Nova Scotia. In general it is rare to find
the Highland emigrants departing from the orthodox routes
opened up by their former neighbours.
Thus we learn from the Old Statistical Account that S. Uist and
Barra had from 1772 onwards, a continuous connection with
Prince Edward Island. Some of the Hebrides had their goal
upon Cape Breton ; J Lochaber, Keppoch and Glengarry sent
their emigrants to the district of Canada that took the name
1 J. MacGregor, Observations on Emigration to British America, 1829.
j 6 Miss Margaret I. Adam
of the last ; the Arran exiles found a new home in Megantic
County ; while Skye, Sutherland, Ross and Argyllshire found
their way to the Carolinas ; and then after 1782 to various
destinations in Canada, of which Pictou appears to have been
the favourite. Possibly the settlement of the 82nd Highlanders
at Pictou, after their disbandment in 1733? helped to turn
attention in this direction.
Undoubtedly the clannish instinct was a powerful contributory
force in promoting emigration, and a force which appeared to
gain increased strength with the departure of each fresh batch of
emigrants.
The persuasive powers of the emigration agents did a similar
work for those districts which had hitherto been unaffected by
contact with America. All contemporaries were agreed that their
influence was enormous. The Highland Society,1 in particular,
thought it so important that it declared the most effective method
of stopping emigration, would be to cut down the profits of the
agents and shipping companies, by strict government regulations
in the interest of the passengers ; and, indeed, the condition of
the emigrant ships was such that it might well be wondered why
people were induced to go.
In essentials, the trade in emigrants was not new. The
eighteenth century emigration agents had their seventeenth
century prototypes in the captains of such notorious ships as the
* Ewe and Lamb ' and the * Speedwell.' To the seventeenth
century skipper no one had come amiss ; sturdy vagabonds,
religious refugees, political offenders, voluntary emigrants, prisoners
from the Tolbooth or unconvicted criminals, all were accepted,
mingled together, and any deficiency in numbers made up by
persons kidnapped for the purpose. In the eighteenth century
the agent had to rely less on force and more on persuasion, but
it is doubtful if the emigrants gained much by the apparent march
of civilisation. Though the hardest indictment of the emigrant
ships never quite reached the appalling grimness of Woodrow's
picture of the New Jersey passage, the fact remains that their
death-roll was a challenge even to the West African slavers of the
same period.
But however horrible the ships, and however unscrupulous the
agents, they are essential links in the chain of emigration.
Previous emigrants might represent America as a place of refuge,
but it was the agents that supplied the means of getting there.
1 Highland Society Transactions, 1803.
Highland Emigrations of 1783-1803 77
Together, they brought emigration into the mental and physical
horizon of the class which, earlier in the century, had found its
only outlet in migration to Ireland, or to the manufacturing towns
of Western Scotland.
But these suggested causes of emigration only explain half the
truth. They explain why part of the Highland population
preferred to remove to America, rather than anywhere else ;
they do not explain why a people so notoriously conservative and
attached to their native soil should have chosen to move at all.
Here we are dealing with causes of quite a different kind, some
of which were very general in their operation, and some of minor
importance, affecting only small areas, or special years.
Amongst the particular causes, the periodic famines stand out
with special prominence. A typical example was the terrible year V
of dearth which occurred just at the beginning of our period, when
the bad harvest of 1782 spread distress of a painful kind throughout
the north and west of Scotland.
Traill, the Sheriff of Caithness and Sutherland, writing in
April 1783, said that the condition of northern Scotland was
lamentable, and in Ross-shire people were dying in great numbers
for want of food. Macpherson of Badenoch gave similar evidence
for his district. Everywhere the fields were waste, the rents were
unpaid, and even substantial farmers went begging their bread.1
During the crisis most of the greater landlords appear to have
behaved with generosity, many supporting the whole of their
tenantry throughout the difficult time, but the smaller proprietors
were themselves too hardly hit to be able to do much to help the
farmers.
The distress of 1782 and 1783 undoubtedly helped the revival
of emigration. In a letter appearing in the Caledonian Mercury
of November 29th, 1784, a Halifax correspondent described the
arrival of thousands of emigrants as a result of the famine. It is
true that many of these were drawn from the Lowland districts
of Banff and Aberdeenshire, and do not therefore come within
the scope of this enquiry, but it seems probable that the affected
Highland areas also contributed their share.
Another local cause of rather a novel kind was suggested by
Sheriff-Substitute Brown of Inverness-shire. Brown attributed
the emigration from certain areas to a movement which took its
rise along the valley of the Caledonian Canal, and ultimately
1 Report on Distress in Scotland presented to the House of Commons, May 1783,
printed May 1846.
78 Miss Margaret I. Adam
formed an interesting and unusual blend of religious revival and
French Revolutionary propaganda.
4 The late flame of emigration first began to be kindled along
the tract of the Caledonian Canal, by certain religious itinerants
who addressed the people by interpreters, and distributed
numerous pamphlets, calculated, as they said, to excite a serious
soul concern. The consequence was that men who could not
read began to preach, and to inflame the people against their
lawful pastors, whom they never had suspected of misleading
them. They next adopted a notion that all who were superior
to them in wealth and rank were oppressors whom they would
enjoy the consolation of seeing damned. Lastly, many of them
took into their heads that all labour not necessary for the support
of existence was sinful. When the fumes of discontent had thus
been prepared, through the medium of fanaticism, to which, it is
known, the Highlanders are strongly attached ; at last those
levelling principles which had long been fermenting in the
south made their way among them, and excited an ardent
desire of going to a country where they supposed all men
were equal, and fondly flattered themselves they might live
without labour.'1
This passage sheds a rather new light upon the psychology of
the Highland emigrant, but there is unfortunately not sufficient
evidence from other sources to enlarge upon it. Still, Brown was
a contemporary, living practically on the spot he was describing,
and it seems reasonable therefore to suppose that his statements
were not made without some foundation.
Interesting, however, as these local causes of emigration may
be, it is obvious that we must go further afield to account for the
general restlessness of the Highland people during the twenty
years in question.
Both then and since the three most popular explanations put
forward have been rack-renting, the union of farms, and the dis-
placement of cattle and tillage by sheep, all three being generally
regarded as symptoms of the greed and tyranny of the land-
holding class.
Viewed more closely the three suggested causes tend to merge
into each other. In the late eighteenth century it was not usual
to find Highland farms being united except for the purpose of
adapting them better to sheep-runs. Hence the second and third
causes of emigration are hardly distinguishable. The question of
1 Brown, Strictures, 1 806.
Highland Emigrations of 1783-1803 79
the rise of rents is more complex, but is still closely associated
with the introduction of sheep.
To start with, it may be granted that rents in the Highlands
did rise throughout the whole of the eighteenth century. That
rise can be attributed to various circumstances : to the special
conditions created by the French Wars, to the substitution of
commercial rents for the nominal ones hitherto paid by the tacks-
men, to the abnormal competition for farms caused by the rapid
growth of population, and sometimes to pure greed and stupidity
on the part of the proprietors.
But in many cases it will be found that the rise in rents accom-
panied the introduction of sheep, and the charge of rackrenting
against the landlord is simply the charge of sheep substitution put
in another form, the truth being that the proprietor could get,
without difficulty, rents from the sheep farmers that would
certainly appear as rackrents if applied to ordinary tenants.
Telford, the engineer, said that the sheep farmer could pay
with ease three times the rent normally given, and Sir George
Mackenzie1 gave an example from the Balnagown estate which
bears out Telford's statement.
Three small farms were let about 1760 to nine tenants at a
total rent of £9, i.e. £i per head, the farms including a hundred
acres of meadow, a big stretch of hill and heath, and a tract of
moss and moor providing coarse pasture. As time went on the
rent was gradually increased until the total for the three farms
stood at £30, which some of the tenants thought so excessive that
they gave up their holdings. At the time Mackenzie was writing
the farms had been turned into one sheep-run, the tenant of which
considered a rental of j£ioo as a moderate valuation of his farm.
It is true that some of the sheep farmers were unable to pay
the rents they had light-heartedly offered, a fact which Mackenzie
attributed to want of skill, knowledge and capital on the part of
the native farmer. In any case, it was inevitable that as more
land passed from cultivation into pasture the abnormal profits of
the sheep farmer must decline, and he might find himself at the
end of his lease quite unable to pay the rent he had willingly
offered at the beginning.
In general, however, the landlord was not accused of rack-
renting the sheep farmers, since it was plain that most of them
prospered notwithstanding the high rents. But it may be
admitted that what were fair rents to the big sheep farmers
1 Mackenzie, Agricultural Report of Ross and Cromarty, 1813.
8o Miss Margaret I. Adam
would certainly be excessive when applied to the small cattle
farmer or cultivator. The outcry of the philanthropist against
the rise in rents was thus in essence a protest against the pro-
prietor revaluing his estate on a basis of sheep, instead of tillage
or cattle farming.
The most common view then of the general causes producing
this phase of emigration tends to resolve itself into these three
propositions — that emigration was chiefly the result of the creation
of sheep runs ; that the introduction of sheep was due solely to
the greed of the landowner, and his callous indifference to the
interests of his original tenants ; that the landlord, therefore, is to
be held primarily responsible for the great exodus of population
from the Highlands westwards.
To take these points in order, there certainly exists a certain
amount of evidence pointing to sheep farming as the cause of
emigration. The following contemporary writers all give some
support to this view : Sir John Sinclair,1 James Anderson,2
the Rev. Mr. Singers,3 Sir George Mackenzie,4 Telford,5 Captain
Henderson,6 as well as several ministers in the Old Statistical
Account. The value of these particular authorities lies chiefly in the
fact that most of them were not unfriendly disposed towards the
landowners, while both Sinclair and Mackenzie were supporters of
the introduction of sheep, and hence not likely to prejudice their
case by exaggerating its effects upon depopulation. Further, it must
be added that some of the authors were speaking from first-hand
knowledge ; the minister of Loch Broom was drawing his conclu-
sions from his own parish ; while Captain Henderson gave from
his experience two authenticated cases in 1806 of small tenants
evicted to make way for sheep, one in Strathnaver and one in
Edderachylis.
Admittedly, then, some emigration must have resulted from the
introduction of sheep, but the extent of such emigration is an
extremely debateable point. The majority of the writers who
favoured sheep farming as the sole, or even the main cause of
1 Sir John Sinclair, General View of Agriculture of the Northern Counties and Islands
of Scotland, 1795.
2 James Anderson, LL.D., Present State of the Hebrides and West Coasts of Scotland?
1785-
3 Singers, Highland Society Transactions, vol. iii. 1807.
4 Mackenzie, Agricultural Report of Ross and Cromarty, 1813.
5 Telford, Scots Magazine, May, 1803.
6 Henderson, Agricultural Report of Sutherland, 1812.
Highland Emigrations of 1783-1803 81
emigration based their case, not on definite examples, but on
general principles.
Sheep-farming, they argued, compelled the enlargement of
farms, and must therefore have led to the eviction of small
tenants. Sheep-farming raised rents, and the small farmers who
were unable to pay must have been weeded out. Sheep-farming
required less labour than cattle or tillage, and by diminishing
employment must have caused depopulation. Finally, sheep
were introduced in large numbers into the Highlands during
the eighteenth century, and simultaneously emigration from the
Highlands took place on a large scale, hence the one must have
been the cause of the other.
There is a certain amount of truth at the back of all these
assertions, but the case for the causal connection of sheep and
emigration is far from complete, and there were not wanting
writers even in the eighteenth century to show flaws in the
arguments. They also in many cases, like the minister of
Kilninver and Kilmelfort, were writing from direct observation
of the effects of sheep introduction in their own parishes. The
opponents of the sheep-farming thesis were far from being agreed
in matters of detail, but collectively they produced the following
counter-assertions.
They denied that sheep-farming, in most cases, displaced
cultivation or even cattle-farming, much of the land brought
under sheep having hitherto been entirely waste. They denied
that such displacement, where it did take place, necessarily
produced emigration. They denied that cattle-farming, as
practised in the Highlands, gave much more genuine employ-
ment than sheep-farming. Finally, they suggested alternative
causes for the emigration of the period.
Some of the facts offered in support of these statements are
worth giving in detail.
As against the depopulation theory there was the argument
from statistics. The Farmeri Magazine of 1800, basing its
figures on Webster and the Old Statistical Account^ stated that
in 1755 the population of Argyllshire, Inverness-shire, and
Ross-shire was 170,440; by the Old Statistical Account (1792-8)
it was 200,226, a substantial increase for an area in which there
were no expanding towns of any size, and in which sheep-farming
was developing rapidly.
Secondly, there is the significant fact that Argyllshire, which
took strongly to sheep- farming, provided comparatively few of
82 Miss Margaret I. Adam
the late eighteenth century emigrants, while the Hebrides, which
were much less affected by sheep-farming, provided many.
Again, a writer in the Caledonian Mercury, of December 1781,
pointed out that at the last tryst at Falkirk the number of black
cattle presented exceeded all previous records, despite the fact
that they were drawn from districts into which sheep had been
largely introduced. His statement is borne out by the Agricultural
Report of Perthshire, 1799, and the conclusion seems reasonable
that the sheep were an addition to and not a substitute for the
original stock. The following passage from Duncan Forbes
might be quoted in the same connection :
' Of this large tract of land [from Perth to Inverness] no part
is in any degree cultivated, except some spots here and there in
Straths and Glens, by the sides of Rivers, brooks, or lakes, and
on the Sea Coast and Western Islands. The grounds that are
cultivated yield small quantities of mean Corns, not sufficient to
feed the inhabitants, who depend for their nourishment on milk,
butter, cheese, etc., the product of their Cattle. Their constant
residence during the harvest, winter and spring is at their small
farms, in houses made of turf; the roof, which is thatched,
supported by timber. In the summer season they drive their
flocks and herds many miles higher among the mountains, where
they have long ranges of coarse pasture. The whole family
follow the Cattle ; the men to guard them, and to prevent their
straying ; the women to milk them and to look after the butter
and cheese, etc. The places in which they reside when thus
employed they call shielings, and their habitations are the most
miserable huts that ever were seen.'1
Apparently it was possible to introduce sheep to some extent
without disturbing anything but the summer pastures, and such
a disturbance was not entirely a matter for regret, since the
existence of these pastures generally tempted the Highland farmer
to overstock his farm, with disastrous results during the winter
months.2
So far then, sheep-farming did fill a blank in Highland estate
economy, and involved no necessary displacement of population.
This, however, was not invariably the case. The high rents
offered by the sheep farmers were a strong temptation to the
landlord to turn into sheep walks not only the vacant high
1 Culloden Papers, Thoughts Concerning the State of the Highlands of Scotland, by
Duncan Forbes, probably 1746.
2 O.S.4. Kilninver and Kilmelfort.
Highland Emigrations of 1783-1803 83
ground, but also the occupied and partly cultivated lower slopes,
and in any case the sheep-farmer needed some low ground for
crops and enclosures. Displacement of population in these cases
undoubtedly took place, but it must be noted that the displacement
did not necessarily lead to emigration, or even to migration to a
distance.
Captain Henderson, for example, admits that the tenants
evicted from Strath naver and Edderachylis were given the option
of taking farms on lower ground nearer the sea, though most of
them refused the offer, and preferred to emigrate. So also the
minister of Criech in Sutherland (O.S.A.), in describing the farms
being conjoined and turned into sheep walks, added the informa-
tion that the evicted tenants were simply transferred from one
part of the parish to the other. A similar case was that of Alness
in Ross-shire. In that parish so many farms had been united to
make sheep runs that riots had occurred, and public attention had
been excited ; yet the minister makes it clear that here also the
evicted tenants had been offered other farms, either on the same
estate, or on neighbouring properties.
The general conclusion we draw from the evidence on both
sides is that sheep-farming did displace population ; and hence
did cause a certain amount of emigration, but that the extent of
the displacement has been exaggerated, and where emigration
occurred it was not inevitable, but was largely the result of the
inability or unwillingraess of the native farmer to adapt himself to
the new conditions.
These facts also form a partial answer to the second proposi-
tion, that the introduction of sheep was evidence of the callous
and selfish attitude of the Highland landlord towards his tenants.
That the self-interest of the proprietors was the chief motive
power in the change seems undeniable, but it must be remembered
that the temptation to convert the Highlands into sheep runs was
extraordinarily strong. The superiority of the rents offered has
been already noted. As Knox said :
' It need be no matter for surprise if gentlemen should embrace
the tempting offers from sheep-farmers. One man will occupy
the land that starved fifty or more families ; he gives a double or
treble rent, and is punctual to the day of payment.' l
We have emphasized the word ' starved ' since it calls attention
to a point continually touched upon by all eighteenth century
travellers through the Highlands. All were agreed that the
1 Knox, Tour through the Highlands, 1786.
84 Miss Margaret I. Adam
climate was entirely unsuited to tillage, especially in cases where
the farmer was too poor to tide over the effects of several dis-
astrous seasons in succession. The frequence of the bad years
was for ever threatening ruin both to the farmer and the owner,
and there seemed no hope of betterment while they continued to
place their dependence upon grain crops. This fact had been
brought prominently before the eyes of the landlords by the
great famine of 1782. One estate then dropped no less than
£4000 in arrears of rent, and it was typical of many. No pro-
prietor could reasonably be expected to view this state of things with
enthusiasm or even with acquiescence. The Highland landlord
was in general neither more brutal nor more disinterested than the
rest of mankind, and he lived in days before the social and
ethical problems involved in private landownership had become
matters of common discussion. He saw, or could see if he were
sufficiently intelligent, that the existing system brought neither
profit to himself nor prosperity to his tenants.1 The alternative
had its painful side, though emigration seems on the whole a
lesser evil than hopeless poverty, but at all events it offered
certain tangible benefits to the owner, to the farmer and to the
community.
The landlord got higher rents and more security for
their payment. The new type of tenant could pay the in-
creased rent and yet enjoy a prosperity unknown to his prede-
cessors.2 The community gained by the development of natural
resources hitherto untouched, and by the increase of its food
supply at a time when the latter was urgently necessary.3 It
seems scarcely fair to charge the proprietors with abnormal greed
1 ' But indolence was almost the only comfort which they enjoyed. There was
scarcely any variety of wretchedness with which they were not obliged to struggle,
or rather to which they were not obliged to submit. They often felt what it was
to want food ; the scanty crops which they raised were consumed by their cattle
in winter and in spring ; for a great part of the year they lived wholly on milk,
and even that in the end of spring and the beginning of winter was very scarce *
(O.S.4. Lochgoilhead and KilmoricK).
2 ' A farmer can pasture a large extent of inaccessible grass, not safe for black
cattle ; that he can maintain a stock, with less danger of heavy losses by famine in
winter and spring ; and that sheep as a stock are managed at less expense and are
more marketable than any other' (Rev. Mr. Singers, Transactions of Highland
Society, vol. iii. 1807).
3 ' The produce of this parish since sheep have become the principal commodity
is at least double the intrinsic value of what it was formerly, so that half the
number of hands produce more than double the quantity of provisions for the
support of our large towns' (O.S.A. Lochgoilhead and KilmoricK).
Highland Emigrations of 1783-1803 85
because they yielded to these arguments. No doubt the first
weighed most heavily with most of them, but the most advanced
opinion of their own day was with them.
Men like Sir John Sinclair who were eager advocates of sheep-
farming may have been entirely wrong in their opinions ; they
were certainly partly influenced by economic theories which can
no longer be accepted as absolute. Yet they stood for public
spirit and enlightenment in their own time, and their freedom
from purely personal and sordid considerations was above
dispute. It is not unreasonable then to suppose that other
motives mingled with self-interest in the promotion of sheep-
farming, and we have already given evidence to show that many
landlords made an honest effort, as in the cases of Creich and
Alness, to prevent the inevitable hardships of the transition period
from falling too heavily upon their original tenants.
Some proprietors there were who went further, and in spite of all
inducements refused to introduce sheep walks, deliberately sacrific-
ing their own interests and the economic development of their
estates to the immediate needs of their tenants.1 It was an action
which compels admiration, bat it also brings us to the answer to
the third proposition, and, in fact, to the crux of the whole question.
Suppose all Highland landowners had followed the example of
these self-sacrificing Hebridean gentlemen, would the tide of late
eighteenth century emigration have been held back, and would
the tenants have received any permanent advantage from this
self-denial ?
Our answer to both questions is no.
The real cause of Highland distress and Highland emigration
in the late eighteenth century is to be found in circumstances
which the landlord did not create, and which were entirely apart
from the introduction of sheep. Briefly, the Highland population
was over-running its resources, and, unless positive preventive
measures were taken, emigration or migration on a fairly large
scale was inevitable.
No one, of course, can lay down an arbitrary limit to the
number of persons the Highlands were capable of supporting.
Had all the resources of civilisation, even eighteenth century
civilisation, been applied to the problem no doubt the limit might
have been considerably extended. But the fact remains that as
things were, a large and increasing number of the Highland
Anderson, Present State of the Highlands, 1785; MacDonald, Agricultural
Report of the Hebrides, 181 1 ; O.S.A. Ardchattan and Muckairn.
86 Miss Margaret I. Adam
inhabitants were superfluous, that is, there was not enough work
for them to do, nor enough food for them to eat.
To come to the evidence, there are, in the first place, the rather
remarkable population figures supplied by Sinclair's Analysis of the
Statistical Account, 1825, and by MacDonald's Agricultural Report
of the Hebrides, 1811 :
POPULATION.
Cir. 1755 Cir. 1795
Sutherlandshire, - - 20,774 22,961
Inverness-shire, - - 64,656 73>979
Argyllshire, - 63,291 76,101
The Hebridean figures are more sensational :
CHURCH RECORD.
1750 1808-9
Total population of Hebrides, 49,485 91,049
The particular parishes show this remarkable increase in detail :
1750 1808-9
Coll and Tiree, - 2,704 4>39°
N. Uist, - 1,836 4,012
S. Uist, i>958 5»5°°
Duirinish, - 2,685 4,100
Gigha, 463 850
Harris, 1,993 3,420
Kilfinichen, 1,616 3>5°°
These figures are sufficiently striking by themselves ; they are
more so when we remember that they leave out of account the
remarkable emigrations of our own period which removed part of
the surplus. Keeping in mind what the Hebrides were like,
their natural limits under the best of cultivation and their want
of all expanding manufactures, it seems impossible to avoid
the conclusion that the greater part of the increase must have
been nothing but a dead weight upon the scanty resources of the
islands, and a means of lowering the general standard of living of
all the inhabitants.
The problem of unemployment is of course one which neces-
sarily arises in any rural area where land is the sole or almost the
sole means of support. The aggravated character which it
assumes in the Highlands, and especially in the Hebrides, is due
partly to the temperamental peculiarities of the Highlander, and
partly to the geographical isolation in which he lived.
Highland Emigrations of 1783-1803 87
In the Lowlands, a person who found himself without work
moved off to the town to look for it, and the problem, therefore,
never developed to an extent that attracted public attention. In
the Highlands the people were to start with more prolific ;
the tie of kinship was sufficiently strong to allow an able-bodied
man to live for some time on the charity of others, without any
feeling of shame ; l while his attachment to the soil, and his
remoteness from the manufacturing areas, increased the moral
effort required of the Highlander who would leave his home in
search of work. Some did make the effort, but it is obvious
from the population figures that many did not, or at least not
until things had come to such a pass that only emigration in
numbers would relieve the situation.
Most eighteenth century writers were agreed that the rapid
increase of population in the Highlands was a comparatively new
phenomenon, not dating back much before the opening of their
own century. The time of its appearance is not difficult to
explain ; the removal, or partial disappearance, of such checks
to population as private war and the small-pox scourge did so
much ; the introduction of the potato, and the natural fecundity
of the Highlander did the rest.
One of the earliest allusions to it comes in Martin's Western
Islands, published in iyo3.2 He describes the population as
having the utmost difficulty in subsisting, though then it only
numbered some forty thousand as against MacDonald's ninety-one.
By 1747 the Scots Magazine was appealing vigorously for the
establishment of manufactures in the Highlands that would give
work to the unoccupied inhabitants, while twenty years later
Pennant,3 who was never a sympathiser with the landlords, found
himself unable to refrain from commenting upon the abnormal
number of idle able-bodied adults to be found in many Highland
households.
References of this kind multiply as the problem itself becomes
more acute.
* There is no doubt,' wrote Anderson, * that one-tenth part of
the present inhabitants (of the Highlands) would be sufficient to
perform all the operations there, were their industry properly
exerted.'4
1 MacDonald's Agricultural Report of Hebrides, 1811.
2 Martin, History of the Western Islands, 1703.
3 Pennant, Tour in Scotland. Pt. I., 1772.
4 Anderson, 1785.
88 Miss Margaret I. Adam
An article appearing in the Caledonian Mercury of October 2ist,
1791, for the purpose of denouncing those responsible for the
emigrations, included the sentence, ' It must at the same time
be admitted that with the best management pasturage and agri-
culture alone can never find subsistence for Highland fecundity/
In the Old Statistical Account the ministers of Lochgoilhead and
Kilmorich, of Glenelg, of Duirinish, of Bracadale, of Lochalsh,
of Jura and Colonsay, of Tiry, and of Kilninver and Kilmelfort,
all testify to the growth of their parishioners beyond the resources
of their parishes.
To quote at random from their accounts : * Emigrations to
America have proved once and again a drain to this island, but
in the present mode of management it may be said to be still
overstocked with inhabitants ' (Jura and Colonsay) ; ' they must
go somewhere for relief unless manufactures be introduced to
employ them ' (Tiry).
* A principal cause of this emigration was that the country was
overstocked with people, arising from frequent early marriages ;
of course, the lands were able to supply them but scantily with
the necessaries of life.' (Small Isles.)
' The inhabitants are now become so crowded that some relief
of this sort [emigration] in one shape or another seems absolutely
necessary.' (Lismore and Appin.)
These quotations seem to make the connection of the redund-
ancy of population with emigration fairly evident, but we might
add two more, the one from Mr. Kemp, who, after a prolonged
tour through the Highlands, drew up a careful analysis of the
causes of emigration for the Scots Magazine of 1792 ; the other
written ten years later by the Minister of Rannoch, also as the
results of personal observation.
Kemp concluded as follows :
'An attentive and general observation of the present state of
the Highlands and Islands, it is imagined, will warrant the
assertion that the great and most universally operating cause
of emigration is that, in comparison with the means of subsist-
ence which they afford, these countries are greatly overstocked
with inhabitants.' *
The same general idea was expressed by Irvine of Rannoch
in 1803 with rather more forcibleness.
' In some valleys the population is so excessive that it is a
question with many discerning people how the one half of the
1 Kemp, Tour to the Highlands (S.P.C.K.) ; Scots Magaziaf, Feb. 1792.
Highland Emigrations of 1783-1803 89
inhabitants could subsist though they should have the land for
nothing. Those who would be tenants are so numerous, and the
land fit for cultivation so scanty, that all cannot be satisfied. The
disappointed person, feeling himself injured, condemns the landlord
and seeks a happy relief in America.' l
The cumulative effect of this evidence seems fairly obvious.
The late eighteenth century emigration was not primarily due
to any changes in Highland estate economy. The introduction
of sheep, and the other factors already mentioned, no doubt
helped to bring matters to a head, but even had there been no
change from cattle and tillage to sheep, emigration must still have
taken place, and taken place on a large scale.2
It is possible, of course, to argue, as many have done, that the
landlords ought to have been able to think of preventive measures
that would have held back the tide. In point of fact many did
make an effort, and some, as MacDonald testified, sacrificed a
considerable amount of rent in their attempts to cope with the
problem. But the generous feeling which allowed tenants to
partition their little farms to provide for their families, until the
sub-divisions became so small that the holder could neither live
on his produce nor pay any rent, could only end by aggravating
the situation.
If it is essential to bring a charge against the average eighteenth
century landlord for what he did or left undone in connection
with this phase of emigration, it can mostly be resolved into the
admission that he possessed neither the capital nor the brains to
solve a problem which, in a rather different form, is still perplexing
the statesmen of the twentieth century.
MARGARET I. ADAM.
1 Alex. Irvine, Minister of Rannoch, Scots Magazine, Feb. 1803.
2 'Every candid observer of things will admit that from the Highlands, even
under the old system, emigration must have taken place to a certain extent, unless
the growing population had been reduced by worse causes than the one complained
of — by the sword, the small-pox, or other destructive maladies.' — Highland Society
Transactions, 1807.
Old Edinburgh
TWO books have recently been published dealing with the
history of the Scottish capital.1 One is the history of the
Burgh Muir, compiled from the Records by Dr. Moir Bryce,
and it is a pathetic circumstance that the learned author lived
only just long enough to see the publication of his book, but
not long enough to be able to appreciate the welcome which it
received. The other volume is the outcome of that interesting
exhibition of old maps of Edinburgh, which was held under the
auspices of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society at Edinburgh
in the summer of 1919. To all lovers of Edinburgh and
students of its ancient history these maps will shed an illuminating
light on obscure questions of locality.
Mr Moir Bryce's book is, as might be expected from the
author, a very thorough piece of work from the archivist's point
of view. In it we can trace the succession in the various lands
which were included in the Burgh Muir, and in those properties
which, though within its boundaries, were yet in a sense outside
of it. The whole book is really concerned with the progress of
titles, and these are detailed with meticulous care. The entire
area under discussion is clearly displayed in a map setting forth
the boundaries of the Muir and the sites of the different places
mentioned in relation to the streets and buildings of to-day. If
any exception can be taken to it, it is that the limits both of the
Muir itself and the separate properties within it are all indicated
by red lines ; it would have been preferable if some other colours
had been used to show the extent of the lands lying within the
Muir, such as Bruntsfield, Whitehouse and the Grange of
1 The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club for the years 1917 and 1918, vol. x. :
the Burgh Muir of Edinburgh from the Record. By William Moir Bryce, LL.D.,
President of the Club. Pp. xiv, 278, 37. With 4 Plans and 3 Illustrations.
4to. Edinburgh, printed for the Old Edinburgh Club, 1918 (issued 1919). The
Origin and Growth of the City of Edinburgh, and the History of its Cartography \
with ii Maps and 21 Illustrations. Royal 8vo. Edinburgh: The Royal Scottish
Geographical Society, 1919.
Old Edinburgh 91
St. Giles. These did not form part of the great gift of David I.
to the city of Edinburgh, which is believed to have been made
in. the twelfth century.
The Grange of St. Giles was not indeed in King David's power
to grant, as it had in all probability been assigned by his pre-
decessor Alexander I. to his new church of St. Giles, which he
seems to have founded about 1 1 20. But by 1151 the lands of
the Grange had come into possession of the monks of Holm
Cultram, a Cistercian convent in Northumberland, founded by
David's eldest son Henry, Earl of Northumberland. These
English monks, however, fell out of favour, and in David II. 's
time were turned out of their possessions, and the lands were
annexed by the Crown, and ultimately formed part of the lands
belonging to the Principality of Scotland. In 1390 Andrew
Wardlaw had a charter of Grange on a blench holding, the
reddendo being a pair of gloves delivered annually in the Church
of St. Giles. It is interesting to note that the pair of gloves has
been commuted for a sum of five shillings, which is now payable
by the proprietors of the Grange Cemetery, a most inadequate
equivalent in these days.
The Wardlaws held the lands till 1 506, and then it went to a
family of Cant, and in 1632 to Sir William Dick, JProvost of
Edinburgh, whose tragic story is well known, and has been
related in detail by the author of The Grange of St. Giles and
other writers. The daughter of the last Dick laird of the
Grange married Sir Andrew Lauder, the fifth Baronet of
Fountainhall, and in their descendants, the Dick Lauders, the
property still remains.
The lands of Bruntsfield were originally an appanage of an
official called the King's Sergeant. In 1381, one Richard Browne,
in whom the office was both heritable and hereditary, parted with
it and the lands to the Lauders, the progenitors of the Lauders
of Hatton, but the property continued to be called by the name
Brounesfield or Bruntsfield. In 1603 Sir Alexander Lauder sold
the place to John Fairlie, a burgess of Edinburgh, who added to
the mansion-house, where his initials and those of his wife,
Elizabeth Weston, may still be seen over the windows. In 1695
Bruntsfield was purchased from the Fairlies by George Warrender,
afterwards Lord Provost of Edinburgh, in the possession of
whose family it still is. In connection with this Mr. Moir Bryce
deserves credit for exploding, once and for all, the extraordinary
story related by Grant, in his Old and New Edinburgh, that
92 Sir James Balfour Paul
Warrender, probably from his civic influence, ' got it as a free
gift from the magistrates.'
Coming to the Muir proper, there is good reason for supposing
that it was gifted to the Burgh by David I., and that the forest
of Drumselch, which then covered it, lost its distinction as a royal
hunting place. One of the most interesting traditions connected
with the locality is the terms by which the lairds of Penicuik held,
and still hold, these lands. This was to blow three blasts of a
horn on the common muir of Edinburgh ; where these blasts
were blown is somewhat doubtful ; it may have been at the
Buckstane on the Old Braid Road, but as this is outside the
limits of the Muir, our author thinks it more likely to have been
at the Harestane, now placed in the wall close to Morningside
Church, and called the Borestone from a tradition that the
King's standard was placed on it when his army assembled for the
march which ended at Flodden. But this story is, as Mr. Moir
Bryce clearly shows, without foundation.
What historic scenes the old Muir has witnessed. It heard the
tramp of the serried ranks of the army of Edward I. as it swept
onwards towards victory at Falkirk. It saw a Scottish triumph
in 1335, when the Earl of Moray and the Earl of March defeated
the foreign mercenaries under Guy, Comte de Namur. Half a
century later a Scottish army of thirty thousand horsemen
assembled on the Muir preparatory to a raid into England, and a
century after that James III. headed a large army which started
from the same place for a similar purpose ; but it did not get
further than Lauder, where an insurrection among the nobles
resulted in the disbandment of the army and the hanging of the
ill-fated favourites of the King over the bridge. But brighter
and gayer scenes than the mere panoply of armed men were
enacted on the Muir. Under the umbrageous shelter which its
trees afforded, rode the girl Princess Margaret Tudor when,
surrounded by a glittering escort, she came to Edinburgh as the
bride of James IV., and her reception was worthy of her suitor.
Little did the young Princess think that the last time her gallant
husband would set foot on the Burgh Muir would be at the head
of his army as they set forward to the fatal field of Flodden.
With Flodden much of the romance associated with the Muir
disappears. In 1508 the King had granted a feu charter of it to
the Magistrates of Edinburgh, and had given them jurisdiction
over it. This, no doubt, was felt to be necessary in view of the
many rogues and vagabonds who found shelter amidst its leafy
Old Edinburgh 93
glades. We can hardly blame the municipality for neglecting
the chance of securing for the burgh such an admirable place of
recreation for the inhabitants. Such ideas had not permeated the
minds of sixteenth century councillors. Far from preserving the
Muir in all the glory of its magnificent foliage, the first thing they
did was to begin to cut down the trees to such an extent that
there was a very glut of wood in the Edinburgh market. It
could not, indeed, be used in an ordinary way, so we are told by
a local historian that the magistrates gave leave to the burgesses
to build wooden fronts to their stone houses in the High Street,
with a projection of seven feet, so that the width of that highway
was reduced fourteen feet. They also excavated parts of the
ground in search of sandstone for building material. And the
cutting up of the Muir into small feus, on which were * dwelling-
houses, malt-barns, and cow-hills,' tended to obliterate any former
picturesqueness it may have possessed.
But one or two ancient features survived the passing of the
Muir into comparative modernity. In 1513 Sir John Crauford,
a prebendary of St. Giles and one of the earliest of the town's
feuars, erected on the west side of what is now Causewayside a
little chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist. It was served by
himself, and he presented to it a breviary according to the Sarum
use, a book which is now one of the most treasured possessions of
the University Library. He also appointed a hermit who was to
live at the chapel, keep it clean, and generally to assist the chaplain
in the services. He was to be vested in a white robe with a
picture of the head of St. John the Baptist on his breast, and to
have an acre of land with a house for his support. But this
foundation did not last long ; within four or five years the chapel
was acquired by certain Dominican Sisters as an adjunct of a
nunnery of the Order, which was erected not far off on the
grounds of the Grange. Here the Sisters lived in peace but in strict
seclusion till they were temporarily dispossessed by the damage
done to the convent during the invasion of Hertford. Shortly
after, however, they were back again, and continued their placid
and uneventful life till the great storm burst upon them in 1559.
At the time of the Reformation there were only eighteen of them,
' the maist part thereof aigit and decrepit.' It must have been a
sad breaking up for them, but they were warned in time, and
were able to fly before any personal harm could reach them.
They faded away into obscurity, and the last of them, Sister
Beatrix Blacater, seems to have died in 1580. The further
94 Sir James Balfour Paul
history of their lands is traced in minute detail, and it is
curious to note that part of them is now held by the Church
of Scotland.
One other ecclesiastical edifice on the Burgh Muir deserves
notice. The little chapel of St. Roque was erected by the Town
Council in a remote but beautiful part of the Muir sometime in
the early years of the sixteenth century for the benefit of the
sufferers from * the pest ' who were segregated outside the city
walls. It has not much of a history, and the Reformation
brought destruction upon it, though its ruined walls were still
standing in Grose's time, who sketched them in 1788. He says
that about thirty years before, some men who had been employed
to pull down the walls were killed by the collapse of a scaffold,
and that since then no workmen could be induced to continue its
demolition. It was not until the beginning of the nineteenth
century that ' the whole of this interesting and venerable ruin was
swept away as an unsightly encumbrance to the estate of a retired
tradesman.' The adjoining lands now go by the name of Canaan,
and it is thought that that and other scriptural names in the
district may have been introduced by Puritan or Covenanter, but
Little Egypt, also in the vicinity, appears so early as 1535.
The Western and Eastern Muirs are next discussed, but they
need not detain us. The chapter on ' The Fellowship and Society of
Ale and Beer Brewers of the Burgh of Edinburgh,' however, is
worthy of special note. It was established by charter from the Town
Council in 1598, and was the first commercial public company to
be incorporated in Scotland. The Brewers were granted extensive
privileges over the Burgh Loch, now represented by the Meadows,
from which they drew their main supply of water for brewing,
Bruntsfield Links and part of the South Muir. Disputes, how-
ever, soon arose between the Society and the Magistrates, and in
1619 it was dissolved. But it had done some good work in the
way of draining the Meadows and other undertakings, so that the
City magnates felt justified in paying over to it the not incon-
siderable sum of upwards of ^26,000 Scots. Its memory still
lingers in the name of ' Society,' a part of the town which was the
scene of its principal operations, but which, we are told, is now
* a sad, unsavoury slum.'
Enough has been said to show how replete with interest this
volume is. It is an edition definitive, and must be the last word
on its special subject. It is, too, the work of a great local
antiquary, and has been written with loving care. If it errs in
Old Edinburgh 95
anything it is in superabundance of detail, and some of the matter
which is more or less irrelevant to the actual history might with-
out great loss have been omitted.
The other book to which attention has been directed is a very
different one. Instead of an intensive study of a small portion
of the liberties of Edinburgh, it takes cognisance of the whole city
through all its known life. To those interested in maps and town
planning this slim volume, which owes its origin to the public
spirit of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, will be more
than welcome. Both articles and maps are full of suggestion.
We have, in the first place, a characteristic paper dealing with a
survey of Edinburgh and the civic eugenics connected therewith,
from the capable pen of Professor Patrick Geddes. It is not always
quite easy reading, but what Professor Geddes does not know
about town planning is not worth knowing, and if he had been
our municipal aedile when greater Edinburgh was beginning to
expand we would have been spared many of the atrocities which
now offend our eye and taste. For one thing, we should not
have had the railway brought through the most beautiful part of
the town, and it is certain that we should not have had that
accumulation of rubbish called ' The Mound ' tilted into one of
the most beautiful valleys in Scotland. A true lover of his native
town, the late Lord Justice Clerk Macdonald once called up to
the eye of the writer the unparalleled chance we had, ere the rail-
ways and Mound came into existence, of having a great drive,
fringed with umbrageous trees, beginning at the west end of
Princes Street, passing below the hoary Castle rock, along the
margin of a purified and 'ornamented Nor' Loch, and ending at
Holyrood with its majestic background of Arthur's Seat. But it
is useless to cry over spilt milk, and we must adapt ourselves to
conditions as we now find them.
But Professor Geddes is not merely aesthetic, he is quite utili-
tarian as well. He does not wish Edinburgh to be merely a city
of lawyers and parsons, doctors and professors. Much industrial
development may be carried out without doing any real damage
to the residential and academic aspects of the town, if only it is
gone about in a proper way. What that way is Professor Geddes
expounds in some detail, and, whether we agree with him or not,
we are bound to get some practical good from his lofty ideals.
We sincerely hope he is right in believing ' that the municipal
policy and the civic statesmanship of Edinburgh may increasingly
rise beyond such present promise as that of concealment under
96 Sir James Balfour Paul
tramway wires and adornment by their poles : and even beyond
its suburban industrial developments.'
' Primitive Edinburgh ' is the subject of an able paper by
Captain F. C. Mears, who deals with the very beginning of the
city and with times even before that. He discusses minutely the
topography of the district and the system of roads or tracks in
relation to the contours of the country. While there are many
evidences of elaborate ancient earth works on the south-eastern
slopes of Arthur's Seat and even on the south side of the Old
Town ridge, the author does not think that there is any indica-
tion of a large peaceful settlement close to the fort (which is
undoubtedly more ancient) before the twelfth century. This is a
later date than most historians give it, and it is hardly likely that
King Malcolm III. brought his wife, the saintly Margaret, to live
in a primitive fortress in the midst of a lonely waste. Even as a
matter of getting protection through the vicinity of the castle, it
is more probable that the eastern spine was at all events to some
extent peopled in Queen Margaret's day.
It is not, however, the articles, important and interesting
though they be, contributed to this special number of the Geo-
graphical Society's magazine that will make the principal appeal
to most readers. It is rather the wonderful series of maps dealing
with the town that will form the chief attraction. The earliest
authentic representation of Edinburgh is believed to be from the
pencil of an officer attached to Hertford's army in his invasion of
1544. In the foreground we see three bodies of troops marching
up the northern slopes of the Calton Hill bearing amongst them
eight standards, while two other bodies are drawn up as supports
in the rear. In the middle distance three regiments are seen
advancing to the Watergate at the foot of the Canongate, near
Holyrood. The city itself is clearly represented with the spacious
High Street, stretching from the Castle to the Nether Port, which
is shown as an imposing gateway flanked by two towers. Beyond
this lies the Canongate, with its semi-rural houses and gardens on
each side. To the south, parallel with the High Street, is the
Cowgate ; a church on the east with a pointed steeple may be
that of the Dominicans or Blackfriars, while a large building on
the sky-line may be either the Kirk o* Field or the monastery of
the Greyfriars. The contours of Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags
are unmistakable ; we can see St. Anthony's Chapel nestling on
the slopes of the former, overlooking the palace and abbey of
Holyrood. Justice is hardly done to the Castle, which is repre-
Old Edinburgh 97
sented as a rather slim fortress perched on the extreme east end
of the rock, but to make up for that an enormous cannon is
placed in front of the gate ready to rake the High Street from
end to end, which, as a matter of fact, it did. In the original
map all the houses within the walls have red or tiled roofs, while
those in the Canongate have a covering of dark grey, probably
indicating that they were thatched. This is a very valuable map,
and it is not for a century after that we get anything like such a
faithful delineation of the town. The one next in order to that
of Hertford's officer was ' made in Germany,' and appeared in
Miinster's Cosmographia, dated 1550. It may have been drawn
from a description, but it is difficult to believe that it is anything
else than a creation of the artist's brain. No indication of any
street is given, and the whole town is covered with spires
and towers, the names of some of which are noted. But we
cannot put faith in a map which places St. Giles immediately
to the north of the Castle, with St. Cuthbert's close beside it.
The fairly well-known picture of the murder of Darnley can
hardly be called a map, but it has been included on the ground
that while its topography is far from accurate it shows the general
style of houses of the period with their crow-stepped gables and
occasionally outside stairs. The next map is really an attempt to
give a bird's-eye view of the town with its streets and houses in
detail ; it is from Holinshed's Chronicle, and is believed to repre-
sent the siege of the Castle when held for Queen Mary by Sir
William Kirkcaldy of Grange in 1573. It is certainly full of
incidents and entertainment. One thing only can be mentioned
here : in the middle of the High Street, at the Tron, we see an
immense pair of scales into which two men are preparing to put
some goods with the utmost nonchalance, notwithstanding that
the streets are full of armed men and that they themselves are
in the direct line of fire from the Castle. This map is evidently
the source from which the next two are taken, one from the
Dutch Civitates Orbis Terrarum and the other from an unknown
German source. The former was published about 1580, and it is
not till nearly seventy years after that that we get the first satis-
factory perspective views of Edinburgh, those of Gordon of
Rothiemay drawn in 1647. They consist of two sketches of the
town, one from the north and another from the south, showing
the line of the street running from the Castle to Holyrood. The
scale is so small that much detail cannot be made out, but we see
all the steeples towering at disproportionate height above the
98 Sir James Balfour Paul
roofs of the houses. Another view from the south by Holler,
published in 1670 but probably executed a good deal earlier, is
much superior, and we can clearly see the facade of Holyrood and
its courtyard and the fine large gardens of the Canongate houses
sloping down to the valley. A picture of Edinburgh published
in Paris in the eighteenth century is about as fanciful as the one
produced two hundred years earlier, and as valueless as regards
any information which may be got from it.
From these tentative representations of Edinburgh we arrive
at last on a really good bird's-eye view of the town, drawn by
Gordon of Rothiemay in 1647, an<^ engraved in Holland by
De Wit ; it has been thrice reproduced since. The scale is
sufficiently large to give plenty of detail, and it is interesting
to note that, crowded though the town undoubtedly was, there
are still many spacious pieces of ground unbuilt on. There are
some delightful gardens in the middle of a cluster of houses to
the east of the West Bow, and the Parliament House stands very
free in a large courtyard. The fronts of the long row of houses
on the north side of the High Street show their crow-stepped
gables fronting the street and breaking the skyline in a most
effective manner ; how public taste ever came to change so much
as to transform this simple and picturesque style into the hideous
straight-lined monotony of the present day is difficult to under-
stand. Occasionally, too, it seems as if the ground flats of the
houses were arcaded, which would add to the variety and charm
of the scene.
Two maps, or rather two editions of the same map, were
published by Edgar, one in 1742 and the other in 1765. Little
change is observed during that period, but by the latter year the
project of extending the town to the north was ' in the air.' In
the next map, that of Ainslie in 1780, we find not only George's
Square, Brown Square, and Argyle Square to the south, then all
quite new acquisitions to the town, but we have the North Bridge,
the Register House, and practically all the new town from Princes
Street to Queen Street, and from St. Andrews Square to its sister
square at the other end of George Street, which was to be called
St. George's Square, either built or in the process of building.
But too much raith cannot be put in this map as indicating the
actual completion of the buildings and streets shown. The
Register House was begun in 1774, but it was not until 1789
that the national archives were deposited in it. The American
War interfered much with the progress of building at this time.
Old Edinburgh 99
Part of another map of Ainslie's, of date 1 804, deals with the
Leith Walk portion of the town. Fine streets which still remain
show that it was originally the intention to make the east end into
a good residential locality, but Edinburgh ultimately succumbed
to the inevitable tendency of most towns to extend to the west.
Ainslie, therefore, must not be trusted in his lay-out of this part
of the town, e.g., the fine elm tree avenue which stretched from
Pilrig House to Leith Walk, and which many yet alive can
remember, is not indicated, and in its place is Balfour Street,
which did not come to be built for two generations later. It is
curious to note the names of several small streets running across
Pilrig Street. They were to have been named St. Cuthbert Street,
probably because the lands of Pilrig were in that parish, Whyte
Street and Melville Street, evidently after the laird's wife, who
was a Whyte-Melville of Strathkinness. Even in Lothian's map
of 1825 these hypothetical names are still retained. But all these
merry misleadings of the cartographer can be checked by the
ingenuous reader himself if he will turn to Dr. Bartholomew's
excellent chronological map prefixed to the volume, where he will
find not only an exact survey of the City but a clear scheme in
colour showing the date at which each part of the town was built,
and also, in the case of most of the streets, the exact dates at which
they were erected.
To all who like maps, to all who love Edinburgh, to the
historian, the antiquary, and the practical town-planner, this
interesting production of the Geographical Society can be
cordially recommended. T -Q r>
J JAMES BALFOUR PAUL.
Scottish Middle Templars
1604-1869
A LTHOUGH the history of the four Inns of Court does not
A~\. show any special relation with Scotland, as there was with
Ireland,1 the list of Scotsmen admitted to the Middle Temple is of
interest. The record of admissions to the Inn begins early in the
sixteenth century, but it is not until 1604 that there occurs the
name of a Scotsman. On 26th October, 1604, Robert Fowlis was
admitted to membership as the third son of James Fowlis of
Colinton, Lothian. Sir David Foulis, who was a favourite of
James VI., is generally described as the third son,2 and probably
the Middle Templar was his younger brother.
At that period the Readers' Feasts were an important feature
in the life of the Inn.3 The Reader was the Master of the Bench
responsible for the education of the students. The ' reading '
consisted of a dissertation upon some statute, and was made the
occasion for a series of festivities during which the Reader invited
distinguished men as his guests, and, if he desired to do them
especial favour, was allowed by the customs of the Inn to invite
them to become members honoris causa. In that way, during
the reading of ' Mr. Wrightington,' were admitted on 2yth Feb.,
1604-5, Sir Robert Stewart,4 brother of the Earl of Orkney, and
Sir John Skene,5 Clerk Register at the same time as Peregrine
Bertie, Sir Thomas Edmondes (one of the Clerks of the Privy
Council), Sir John Gilbert and Sir Roger Jones, Sheriff of London.
A copy of Sir John Skene's famous codification of The Laws and
Acts of Parliament is in the Middle Temple Library and two
1 See Irishmen at the Inns of Court, by the present writer ; Law Magazine and
Review, vol. 37, pp. 268 et seq.
2 See Dictionary of National Biography and Douglas, Baronage, p. 87.
8 For a full account of Sir James Whitelocke's Reading in 1619 see his Liber
Famelicus, p. 70, published by the Camden Society.
'See Scots Peerage, vol. vi. p. 574.
See Dictionary of National Biography.
Scottish Middle Templars 101
copies of his Regiam Majestatem, of which one bears the signature
of Fabian Philipps on the title-page.
In 1608 King James granted a patent, dated August I3th, to
the Inner and Middle Temples, which is the only formal docu-
ment concerning the relations between the Crown and the Inns.
In it they are said to have been 'for a long time dedicated to the use
of the students and professors of the law, to which, as to the best
seminaries of learning and education, very many young men,
eminent for rank of family and their endowments of mind and
body, have daily resorted from all parts of this realm, and from
which many men in our own times, as well as in the times of our
progenitors, have by reason of their very great merits been
advanced to discharge the public and arduous functions as well
of the State as of Justice, in which they have exhibited great
examples of prudence and integrity, to the no small honour of
the said profession and adornment of this realm and good of the
whole Commonwealth. ' l
No doubt the admission of a number of the king's Scottish
friends was connected with this event, and there is a strong pre-
sumption that the king accompanied them. One of the number
was the Duke of Lennox,2 Gentleman of the Bedchamber and
holder of many high offices of State, who had been made a Master
of Arts at Oxford when the king went there in 1605. David
Murray,3 who occupied a similar domestic relationship to Prince
Henry, was admitted at the same time, together with Sir James
Kennedy and Sir James Hamilton,4 afterwards Viscount Claneboye,
who was entrusted with several confidential missions.
In course of time, however, these Readers' Feasts became so
elaborate and extravagant 5 that the four Inns, at the suggestion
of the king, limited the expenditure to ^300.° They seem, how-
ever, to have been continued on a considerable scale, as when the
Duke of Hamilton became a member in 1683 there accompanied
him the Duke of Ormonde and his grandson, the Duke of
1 See Appendix ' B ' to the Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the
arrangements in the Inns of Court and of Chancery for promoting the study of the law and
jurisprudence, 185 5, p. 207.
2 Cokayne's Peerage, p. 66 sub tit. ; see also Dictionary of National Biography.
3 See Dictionary of National Biography.
4 See Dictionary of National Biography.
5 See, for example, the account of Francis North's Reading Feast in Lives of
the Norths, vol. i. p. 97. Bohn.
6 Middle Temple Records, vol. iii. p. 1312.
io2 C. E. A. Bedwell
Somerset, the Earls of Carlingford and Radnor and the Marquess
of Halifax.
Occasionally ecclesiastics were admitted to membership of the
Inn, and in 1612 the name of the Dean of Salisbury, John
Gordon,1 as a guest of the Reader, John Lowe, is recorded in the
minutes.
Probably Alexander Blair, who was admitted on I4th August,
1671, was the first Scotsman to come to the Inn to study law, and
Archibald Johnstone was the first to be called to the Bar — ' by
reason he is Master of Arts of Edenborough ' — 23rd Nov., 1711.
Under date i6th May, 1740, there is an Order in the minutes
of Parliament of the Inn authorising the call to the Bar of a
Scottish advocate simply upon a certificate of his admission and
practice at the Scottish Bar. It is as follows :
At the Parliament holden the 1 6th day of May, 1740.
Ordered that Mr. Lookup J. having produced a certificate dated
at London the Qth of February, 1739 signed by James Erskine,
Esq. late one of the Lords of Session in North Britain and by
Charles Areskine, Esq., Lord Advocate for North Britain certify-
ing that the said Mr. Lookup had for several years been at the
Barr in Scotland and was orderly admitted Advocate by the Lords
of Session and having also produced another certificate dated at
Edinburgh March 28th 1740, signed by John Pringle, Esq. now
one of the Lords of Session in North Britain certifying that the
said Mr. Lookup served at the Bar of the Lords of Session in the
station of Advocate for the space of six years or thereby and that
he was neither suspended nor deposed from his employment and
service before the Court of Session, and producing an affidavit of
James Hutchinson, clerk to the said Charles Areskine, sworn the
third of May one thousand seven hundred and forty before Francis
Eld Esq., one of the Masters of the High Court of Chancery,
proving the subscriptions of the said Charles Areskine and James
Erskine for the said first mentioned certificate and producing his
own affidavit sworn the sixteenth of May one thousand seven
hundred and forty before the said Mr. Eld proving likewise the
subscription of the said James Erskine to the same certificate, and
also proving the subscription of the said John Pringle to the last
mentioned certificate be called to the degree of the Utter Barr.
There does not appear to be another example, and, in fact,
Scottish advocates have not enjoyed the right of admission to the
English Bar. There is no reciprocal arrangement, owing, no
doubt, to the fact that the Scottish system of law differs so widely
from the English that a knowledge of it is not necessarily an
1 See Dictionary of National Biography.
Scottish Middle Templars 103
equipment for practising in England. It is easier, for example,
for a New South Wales barrister to practise in the English Courts
of Justice than it is for a Scottish advocate. Nevertheless,
Scottish advocates have come to the English Bar and attained
eminence in the profession.
The list may be closed suitably with the name of Lord Young,
who, just fifty years ago, on 24th Nov., 1869, was called to the
Bar while holding the office of Lord Advocate without any of
the customary formalities, with a view to forming a link between
the Bars of the two kingdoms, which is continued at the present
time by Lord Dunedin and Lord Shaw as honorary Benchers of
Inn. C. E. A. BEDWELL.
LIST OF SCOTTISH MIDDLE TEMPLARS
The Editor has to thank Sir James Balfour Paul, Lyon King of Arms ;
Professor R. K. Hannay, Mr. George Neilson, Mr. A. Francis Steuart,
the Hon. Robert E. Boyle, Miss Haldane, Mr. David Baird Smith,
Mr. J. M. Bulloch and others for additional information, printed in small
type after the names in the following list, which has been compiled by Mr.
Bedwell in the course of preparing for publication the Admission Registers of
the Middle Temple.
1604. 26 Oct. Robert Fowlis, third son of James F. of Colinton,
co. Louthian, Scotland.
Advocate 1606. Douglas (Baronage, p. 87) says David
was the third son, and being in great favour with King
James VI. accompanied him to England in 1603, created
a Baronet 1619. Ancestor of the family of Ingleby in
Yorkshire. The fourth son is not named.
1604-5. 27 Feb. Robert Stewart, Knight, brother of the Earl of
[Orkney].
See Scots in Poland and Scots Peerage (Orkney).
John Skeene, Knight, Master of the Rolls in Scotland.
Advocate 1575. Sir John Skene, Lord Clerk Register.
1608-9. 1 6 Mar. Louis, Lord Lenox, Knight of the Garter and
member of His Majesty's Privy Council.
Murray, David, Gentleman of the Chamber to Prince
Henry.
Son of Robert Murray and brother of William Murray
of Abercairny.
Kenedy, James, Knight.
Hamilton, James, King's Serjeant.
io4 C. E. A. Bedwell
1612. 13 Aug. Lord John Gordon, Dean of Salisbury.
Lord of Longarmes in France. Son of Alexander
Gordon, Archbishop of Athens and bishop-elect of Galloway.
1615. 10 Aug. John, Earl of Cassilis.
1671. 14 Aug. Alexander Blair, third son of Robert Blair of
St. Andrews, deed.
1682-3. 9 Feb. James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, son and heir of
William, Duke of Hamilton.
1707. 17 May. Archibald Johnstone, son and heir of Patrick J. of
Edinburgh, Knight.
Called ' by reason he is Master of Arts of Edenborough,'
23rd November, 1711.
1708. 9 Nov. John Cuming, son and heir of John C. of Edinburgh,
North Britain, merchant.
Called i jth May, 1713.
1709. i Dec. George Montgomerie, son and heir of John M. of the
City of Edenborough.
I7I3- T3 Apr. David Cannedy, second son of Archibald C. of Edin-
burgh, North Britain, Knight and Baronet.
Kennedy of Culzean. Advocate 1 704.
1716. 12 May. Alexander Gumming, son and heir of Alexander C.,
Baronet of Cultyr, Mar, Scotland.
Advocate 1714. Chief of Chirokee Indians.
7 Aug. Hugh Dalrimple, second son of the Rt. Hon. David D.,
Lord Advocate of Scotland, Baronet.
Advocate 25th February, 1718. Afterwards H. D.
Murray-Kynnynmond of Melgund and Kynnynmond.
Died 1741.
1718. 21 Nov. Patrick Haldane of Edinburgh.
Of Gleneagles. Advocate 1715. Professor, University
of St. Andrews. M.P. for St. Andrews Burghs and
Solicitor-General.
1720-1. 7 Feb. William Grant, second son of Francis G. of Cullen,
Aberdeen, Baronet.
Advocate 1722. Lord Prestongrange 1754.
1721. 6 Nov. Patrick Turnbull, second son of James T. of Newhall,
Teviotdale, Scotland.
Advocate 1702. Called 26th November, 1725.
1722-3. 2 Jan. Lewis Gordon, second son of Robert G. of Gordon's
Town, Moray, Scotland, Baronet.
Called 3 ist May, 1728.
Scottish Middle Templars 105
1727. I June. Robert Haldane, fourth son of John H. of Gleneagles,
Perth, deed.
Purchased Gleneagles from his half-brother Patrick.
M.P. OfAirthrey.
23 Oct. James More, only son of James M. of Earnslaw,
Berwick, N. Britain, deed.
1728. 15 July. Gilbert Campbell, sixth son of Archibald C. of Nairn,
N. Britain, Knight.
1732-3. 9 Jan. George Morison, only son (by his wife Aminta)
of William M. of Preston Grange, North
Britain.
Of Little Chalfield, Co. Wilts, and thereafter of Sun-
dridge, Kent. Died 1788.
1733. 24 Aug. Charles Erskine, son and heir of Charles E., 'Solicitor
General for Scotland. (Admitted Lincoln's Inn
22 June, 1743.)
Called 2 6th October, 1739. M.P. for Ayr Burgh,
1747-9. Born 1716. Died unmarried 1749.
1733-4. 19 Jan. Andrew Mitchell, only son of the Rev. William M.
of Edinburgh, clerk, deed.
Advocate 1736. Called I zth May, 1738. Sir Andrew
Mitchell. M.P. for Aberdeenshire and for the Elgin
Burghs. Ambassador to Prussia 1756.
1735. 6 May. John Dairy mple, alias Hamilton, second son of Robert
D. of Castleton, Haddington, N.B., Knight,
deed.
Of Bargany. M.P. Advocate 1735.
15 Dec. Gilbert Buchanan, son and heir of Gilbert B. of
Glasgow, merchant, deed.
Called 25th April, 1740.
1739. ii Oct. John Lookup, son and heir of Rev. John L. of Med-
calder, Midlothian.
Advocate 1731. Called i6th May, 174°-
12 Nov. William Baird, son and heir of William B. of Auch-
medden, Banff.
Called 20th May, 1748. Died 1750.
1740. 24 Apr. Thomas Finlay, son and heir of James Finlay of
Balchnystie, Fife.
1742. 5 Nov. James Brebner, son and heir of James B. of Towie
de Clatt, Aberdeen, N.B.
Called 28th November, 1746.
H
106 C. E. A. Bedwell
1744. 8 Aug. David Dalrymple, son and heir of James D. of Hales,
Haddington, N.B., Baronet.
Sir David. Born 1 726. Advocate 28th February, i 748.
On the Bench as Lord Hailes 6th March, 1766. Died
1792.
1750-1. 9 Jan. The Hon. Lockhart Gordon, son of the Rt. Hon. John,
Ear) of Aboyne, Scotland.
See Gordons under Arms (New Spalding Club), No. 1 103.
Called 22nd November, 1754. Judge Advocate, Bengal.
1752. 7 Jan. James Douglass, second son of John D. of Killhead,
Annandale, Scotland, Baronet.
Called 2 5th November, 1757. Collector of Customs,
Jamaica.
I757t 25 Jan- Hon. James Lyon, second son of Rt. Hon. Thomas,
late Earl of Strathmore.
H.E.I.C.S. Murdered.
I759- I7 May. Hugh Dalrymple, eldest son of Robert D. of
Edinburgh.
Advocate 1752. Called 8th February, 1771. Attorney-
General, Bahamas.
1771. 3 May. William Alexander, son and heir of William A. of
Edinburgh.
20 May. James Stephen, third son of James S. of Aberdeen, deed.
4 June. Edward Maxwell, eldest son of Robert M. of Dumfries.
1772. i Feb. James Trail, third son of Rev. William T. of Fife,
North Britain, clergyman.
Called 8th February, 1782. M.P.
1773. i Apr. The Hon. Charles Cranstoun, fourth son of the Rt.
Hon. James, Lord C. of Cranstoun, Scotland.
1774. ii June. Charles Dundas, second son of Thomas D. of Fin-
gask, N.B.
Called 1 3th June, 1777. Created Lord Amesbury,
1832.
1775. 14 Nov. John Richardson, third son of George R. of Edinburgh.
Called 26th January, 1781.
1 8 Dec. Thomas Durham, second son of James D. of Largo,
Fife, N.B.
Afterwards Calderwood of Polton.
1776. 8 June. John Cuming Ramsay, eldest son of William R. of
Temple Hall, Angus, N.B., LL.D.
Advocate 1768.
Scottish Middle Templars 107
1777. 1 1 July. John Melvill, only son of Rev. Thomas M. of Scoonie,
Fife, clerk, deed.
14 Nov. James Johnston, eldest son of Robert J. of Irvine, N.B.
Called 30th May, 1783.
1778. 9 Nov. Robert Waddell, eldest son of Robert W. of Crawhill,
Linlithgow, deed.
1782. 2 Mar. Archibald Cullin, youngest son of William C. of
Edinburgh, doctor of medicine.
Called 27th April, 1787.
8 Apr. Thomas Beath, only son of Patrick B. of Edinburgh,
deed.
Called 8th June, 1787.
15 June. Stuart Kyd, eldest son of Harie K. of Arbroath, Angus.
Called 22nd June, 1787. Politician and legal writer.
See Dictionary of National Biography.
4 Nov. Kenneth Francis Mackenzie, only son of Colin M. of
Kirkcudbright.
12 Nov. William Graham, second son of William G. of Edin-
burgh, N. Britain.
1783. i Feb. Charles Alexander Macrae, second son of James M.
of Houston, Renfrew, deed.
1 8 June. John Lowis, third son of John L. of Merchiston,
Midlothian, N.B.
2 July. Philip Callard Ainslie, second son of Philip A. of
Edinburgh, Kt.
Called 22nd June, 1792.
1784. 5 Nov. William Barkley, eldest son of James B. of Cromarty,
Ross.
15 Nov. David Finlayson, eldest son of William F. of
Edinburgh.
1 1 Dec. James Gordon, third son of Harry G. of Gordonfield,
Aberdeen.
Keeper of the Middle Temple Library. See Gordons
under Arms (New Spalding Club), No. 615.
1786. 9 Jan. Alexander Stephens, eldest son of Thomas S. of Elgin,
Murray.
24 June. William Anderson, second son of James A. of
Edinburgh.
25 Oct. Henry Kyd, youngest son of Henry K. of Arbroath,
Angus.
io8 C. E. A. Bedwell
1788. 10 Apr. Andrew Alpine, third son of Alexander A. of Airth,
Stirling, N.B., deed.
1789. 5 Feb. Charles Maitland Bushby, second son of John B. of
Dumfries, N.B.
1792. 29 Nov. William Johnstone, eldest son of Archibald J. of
Dumfries.
Called zyth November, 1812.
I793< 3° Apr. William Moncreifr, eldest son of Harry Moncreiff
Wellwood, of Tullybole, Kinross, Baronet.
Called yth February, 1800, King's Advocate, Admiralty
Court, Malta.
1794. 26 June. Andrew Cassels (admitted to Lincoln's Inn, 14 Aug.,
1787), second son of Andrew C. of Edinburgh,
merchant.
Called 1 1 th November, 1 796. Judge of Admiralty
Court, Cape of Good Hope, 1 809.
1 798. 8 May. Robert Morehead, third son of William M. of Herbert-
shire, Stirling, N.B.
1804. 6 Nov. David Robertson, eldest son of the Rev. John R. of
Jedburgh, Roxburgh.
1806. 8 July. Alexander Harper, only son of James H. of Aberdeen,
deed.
1811. 13 July. James Robertson, eldest son of James R. of Elgin,
Forres.
1813. 14 June. Joseph Douglas, youngest son of the Rev. George D.
of Tain, Ross, Esq.
Called 6th November, 1818.
7 July. Samson Sober Wood, eldest son of Samson Tickle W.
of Edinburgh.
1814. 28 June. James Dewar, second son of David D. of Gilston
House, Fife, army instructor.
Called 6th July, 1821.
1816. 29 June. James Traill, second son of James T. of Hebister,
near Thurso, Caithness.
Called 24th November, 1820. Succeeded to Rather
and Hobbister 1821. Was a Metropolitan Police Magis-
trate. Born 1794. Died 1873.
1819. 19 Nov. Thomas Dunbar, second son of George D. of Mochrum,
Wigton, Knight baronet, deed.
Died 1831.
Scottish Middle Templars 109
1 822. 1 1 June. William Hugh Scott, second son of Hugh S. of Harden,
Roxburgh.
Called 23rd November, 1827. Prebendary.
1824. 7 May. James Colquhoun, eldest son of Frederic C. of
Edinburgh.
Called 3rd July, 1829.
2 July. Charles Hope Maclean, sixth son of Alexander M. of
Ardgour, Argyle.
Called 3rd July, 1829.
19 Nov. Hugh Campbell, eldest son of Archibald C., Kenzean-
cleugh, Ayr.
27 Nov. George Gordon, third son of Alexander G. of
Newton, Aberdeen.
Entered Scots Greys as Cornet 1830. Lieut. 1835.
1825. 5 May. Thomas Spears, only son of Robert Spears of Edinburgh.
1 8 June. John Farley Leith, eldest son of James Urquhart
Murray L. of Barrack, Aberdeen, deed.
Called 25th June, 1830.
1827. 17 Feb. Ronald Macdonald, fourth son of Alexander M. of
Carvabeg in the parish of Laggen, Inverness.
1828. 21 July. Francis Scott, fourth son of Hugh S. of Harden,
Roxburgh.
Called 1 5th June, 1832. M.P. for Roxburgh and Ber-
wickshires.
1831. 21 Apr. John Manson, eldest son of John M. of Edinburgh.
23 Nov. Hugh Fraser, second son of Alexander F. of Morven,
Argyle.
19 Dec. George Birrell, eldest son of George B. of Albany
Street, Edinburgh, deed.
Writer to the Signet 1824. Attorney-General,
Bahamas.
1833. 15 May. Alexander Cumine, fourth son of Adam C. of
Aberdeen.
Advocate 1836.
13 Nov. Charles Arnott, second son of James A. of Arbickie,
N.B.
1834. 13 May. William Dunlop, third son of George D. of Edinburgh.
1837. 24 Feb. John Drummond, third son of James D. of Comrie,
Perth, deed.
Advocate 1831.
no C. E. A. Bedvvell
1838. 26 Jan. John Hosack, third son of John H. of Glengaber,
Dumfries, deed.
Called 29th January, 1841. Police Magistrate, Clerken-
well. Author of Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers. See
Dictionary of National Biography.
3 May. James Whigham (admitted to Lincoln's Inn 10 May,
1825), fourth son of Robert W. of Halliday Hill,
Dumfries.
Judge of County Courts.
3 Nov. Alan Ker, eldest son of Robert Dow K. of Greenock.
Called 25th November, 1842.
16 Nov. James Logan, third son of George L. of Edrom,
Scotland, lieutenant.
Advocate 1837. Called 28th January, 1842. Died in
Jamaica 1844.
1839. 17 Apr. George Robinson (admitted to Lincoln's Inn 7 May,
1835), only son surviving of George Garden R.
of Banff.
Advocate 1823. Called 3rd May, 1839.
19 Apr. James Anderson, eldest son of David A. of Bellfield,
near Edinburgh. (Admitted to Lincoln's Inn
20 April, 1835.)
Called 7th June, 1839. Q.C. Examiner in Court of
Chancery. See Middle Temple Bench Book, p. 304.
25 May. William Campbell Gillan, second son of the Rev.
Robert G. of Edinburgh, deed.
Called 3rd May, 1853.
1840. 15 Jan. Alexander Duguid Johnston, second son of James J.
of Glasgow.
Called 27th January, 1843.
2 Mar. William Weir, only son of Oswald W. of Mount
Hamilton, Ayr, Scotland.
Advocate 1827.
1841. 1 6 Apr. Charles Forsyth, second son of Robert F. of Royal
Circus, Edinburgh, advocate.
Advocate 1837. Called 7th May, 1841.
12 June. Titus Hibbert Ware, eldest son of Samuel Hibbert W.
of Edinburgh, doctor of medicine.
Called I ith June, 1844.
6 Nov. Henry Riddell, eldest son of the Rev. Henry R. of
Longformacus, Berwick, Scotland.
Called 22nd November, 1844.
Scottish Middle Templars m
1842. 25 Apr. Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd, eldest son of the
Rev. James B. of Ochiltree, Ayr, clerk.
D.D., LL.D., Minister of St. Andrews, Fife.
21 May. William Gowan, only surviving son of William G. of
Leith, merchant.
Advocate 1831. Called loth June, 1842.
21 Dec. Alexander James Johnston, eldest son of James J. of
Wood Hill, Kinellar, Aberdeen, Esq. (admitted to
Lincoln's Inn, I2th November, 1838).
Called zyth January, 1843. See Dictionary of National
Biography.
1843. 10 Nov. David Cato Macrae, legitimated son of Ivie M. of Ayr.
Called 2Oth November, 1846.
1844. 28 May. Archibald Campbell Barclay, sixth son of the Rev
Peter B. of Kettle, Fife, D.D.
Called nth June, 1847.
2 Nov. James Brown, only son of Neil B. of Greenock,
Scotland.
Called igth November, 1847.
1 6 Nov. John David Bell, fourth son of George Joseph B. of
Edinburgh Academy, Scotland.
Called 1 2th May, 1848.
1845. 9 Apr. Edmund Drummond, third son of Viscount Strath-
allan of Strathallan Castle, Perth.
Called i zth May, 1848. K.C.I.E. Lieut.-Governor
North-West Provinces, India.
19 Apr. John George Tollemache Sinclair, eldest son of George
S. of Ulbster, Caithness, Baronet.
Third Baronet. M.P. for Caithness.
1846. 9 Nov. James Stewart Thorburne, youngest son of the Rev.
William T. of Troqueer, Kirkcudbright.
Called 23rd November, 1849.
1848. 7 Sept. John Cameron Macdonald (admitted to Inner Temple
9 Nov., 1841), eldest son of Thomas M. of
Fort William, Inverness.
1849. 24 Feb. Gilbert Mitchell Innes, youngest son of William
Mitchell I. of Parson's Green, Edinburgh.
23 Apr. John James Lowndes (admitted to Inner Temple
22nd November, 1833), eldest son of John L. of
Arthurlie House, Renfrewshire, deed.
Murdoch Robertson Mclver, sixth son of Lewis Mel.
of Gress, Island of Lewis, Scotland, deed.
ii2 C. E. A. Bedwell
1849. 2D Apr. James Graham, youngest son of Alexander G. of
Limekills, Lanark.
Called I yth November, 1865.
28 Apr. William Peddie, third son of James P. of Edinburgh.
Son of James Peddie, Writer to the Signet. Advocate
1851.
5 Nov. David Maclachlan, youngest son of James McL. of
Dundee.
Called Jth June, 1852.
1850. 1 8 Apr. John Stuart Glennie, fourth son of Alexander G. of
May Bank, Aberdeen.
Called 1 7th November, 1853.
4 May. John Dickie, only son of John D. of Glasgow, deed.
Called 26th January, 1856.
8 June. John Robson, third son of John R. of Kelso>
Roxburgh.
Called 3rd May, 1853.
7 Nov. Fitzgerald Lockhart Ross Murray, youngest son of
William Hugh M. of Pitcazean, Ross, deed.
Called 3oth April, 1855.
1851. 9 Apr. Henry Arkley Eglinton, second son of Robert E. of
Castle House, Dunoon, Argyleshire, merchant.
Called gth June, 1854.
12 Apr. George Campbell, eldest son of George C., Knight,.
of Edenwood, Fife.
M.P. Kirkcaldy. Judge Supreme Court, Calcutta.
K.C.S.I.
1856. 31 Oct. Robert Greenoak, 7 Bellevue Terrace, Edinburgh (2o)>
only son of Robert G. of Edinburgh, aforesaid,
Esq.
Called loth June, 1859.
1859. 31 Oct. Charles Grey Wotherspoon of 8 Great Stuart Street,
Edinburgh (22), youngest son of William W. of
Hill Side, Fife, Solicitor, Supreme Court.
Advocate 1861. Called nth June, 1862.
16 Nov. Charles Noel Welman Begbie of Edinburgh (26),
fourth son of James B. of Edinburgh, physician.
Called nth June, 1862.
1 86 1. 1 6 Apr. Alexander John Robertson of Portobello, Member of
Edinburgh University Council (20), second son
of John R. of Edinburgh, solicitor.
Scottish Middle Templars 113
1 86 1. IO May. Robert Mitchell of Glasgow University and of New
Galloway, Kirkcudbright, Scotland, second son of
John M. of Ayr.
14 Oct. John Macrae Moir, M.A., Aberdeen, 6 Torriano
Avenue, Camden Road (35), third son of David
M. of Thornton, Kincardine, deed.
Called 6th June, 1864.
21 Oct. John Andrew Shand, 24 Royal Circus, Edinburgh (18),
second son of John S. of Edinburgh, Midlothian,
writer to the signet.
Called 6th June, 1864.
2 Nov. George Kennedy Webster of the University of Edin-
burgh and of Burnside House, Forfar (20),
third son of George W. of Burnside House,
Forfar, Sheriff and Commissary Clerk of the
said County.
Called I 7th November, 1863.
1 8 Nov. Donald Grant Nicolson (admitted to Inner Temple
24 Jan., 1860), Member of the General Council
of the University of Edinburgh (35), second son
of the late Malcolm N. of Glendale, Inverness,
J.P.
Called nth June, 1862.
1862. 8 Jan. Robert Baird, 51 London Street, Fitzroy Square,
Middlesex (23), eldest son of Robert B. of the
City of Glasgow, Lanark, deed., solicitor.
Called I yth November, 1864. Judge of District Court,
Jamaica.
8 Jan. Alexander Kennedy Isbister, M.A. Edinburgh Univer-
sity, of Bolt Court, Fleet Street (37), eldest son
of the late Thomas I. of Hudson's Bay, N.
America, gent.
Called iyth November, 1864.
25 Apr. Alexander Muirhead Aitken, Edinburgh University
(39), eldest son of William A. of Ward, Tor-
phichen, Linlithgow, proprietor and farmer.
Called z6th January, 1865.
12 May. Lauchlan Mackinnon of Billany House, Mill Hill,
Middlesex (44), second son of the late Rev. John
M. of Strath, Isle of Skye, Inverness.
Of Duisdale, Skye. Went to Melbourne.
i H C. E. A. Bedwell
1862. 4 Oct. Henry James Sumner Maine of Calcutta and of the
University of Cambridge, LL.D. (40), eldest
son of James M. of Kelso, Roxburgh, phy-
sician, M.D. (Admitted Lincoln's Inn 4 June,
1847.)
D.C.L., K,C.S.I. Professor of Civil Law, Cambridge.
4 Nov. Henry Seton, B.A. Cambridge, and of 15 Lower
Berkeley Street (22), third son of Sir William S.
of Pitmedden, Aberdeen, Baronet.
In Holy Orders.
1863. 2 Jan. George Watson Coutts of London (30), fourth son
of the late John C. of Fraserburgh, Aberdeen,
surgeon.
14 Jan. Henry Graham Lawson of Wadham College, Oxford,
M.A. (27), fourth son of the Rt. Hon. Charles L.
of Borthwick Hall, Edinburgh, Lord Provost of
the City of Edinburgh. (Admitted Inner Temple
29 April, 1859.)
Called 26th January, 1863.
5 May. Lord William Montague Hay of 100 Eaton Place
(37), third son of the Most Noble the Marquis of
Tweeddale of Yester House, Haddington.
Tenth Marquess of Tweeddale.
30 Oct. Alexander Gerard of Rochsoles, Lanarkshire (18),
third son of Archibald G. of Rochsoles,
Lanark.
Called 1 8th November, 1867. Died 1890.
2 Nov. George Smeaton of the University of Edinburgh, first
son of the Rev. George S. of Edinburgh, Mid-
lothian, professor of divinity.
3 Nov. William Baxter of the University of Edinburgh,
youngest son of the late James B. of Clockserie,
Perth, distiller.
1864. 31 Oct. William Scott Forman of the University of Glasgow,
eldest son of James F. of Drummond Place,
Edinburgh, advocate.
In Indian Civil Service. District Judge, Bombay.
8 Nov. John George Charles, Trinity College, Dublin, and
of Kirkcowan, Wigtonshire (21), third son of the
Rev. James C. of Kirkcowan, Wigtown, Scot-
land, D.D.
Scottish Middle Templars 115
1865. 28 Jan. Robert Bannatyne Finlay, Edinburgh University (23),
eldest son of William F. of Cherrybank, near
Newhaven, Edinburgh, M.D.
Called 1 8th November, 1867. Viscount Finlay. Lord
Chancellor.
2O Apr. William Alexander Hunter, University of Aberdeen,
M.A. (20), eldest son of James H. of Aberdeen,
granite polisher.
Called 1 8th November, 1867. Professor of Roman
Law, University of London.
6 June. John Cameron Macgregor of Wiltshire House,
Angell Road, Brixton (19), youngest son of
James M. of Fort William, Inverness, banker.
Called 30th April, 1868. Receiver of High Court,
Calcutta.
4 Nov. Donald Ninian Nicol, Queen's College, Oxford (22),
only son of John N. of Ardmarnock, Argyll.
Called 26th January, 1870. M.P. Argyllshire.
2O Nov. Colin Campbell Grant, member of the General
Council of the University of Edinburgh, and of
1 8 Great King Street, Edinburgh (35), second
son of the Rev. James G., D.D., D.C.L., of the
City of Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, minister
of St. Mary's church and parish, Edinburgh.
Writer to the Signet 1860. Called I7th November,
1868.
22 Nov. James Moffatt, Glasgow University, of Calderbank,
Airdrie (21), sixth son of William M. of Calder-
bank, Airdrie, Lanark, merchant.
Called 6th June, 1868.
1866. 20 Apr. Andrew Duncan, 7 Great College Street, London
(21), second son of Andrew D., of Glasgow,
Scotland.
Called 26th January, 1870.
20 Apr. Archibald Morrison, M.A., LL.D., of Glasgow (44),
eldest son of Alexander M., of Dunblane, Perth,
deed.
Called 26th January, 1869.
7 Nov. James Stoddart Porteous, formerly of Edinburgh (37),
only son of James P., of Kilmarnock, Ayr, Esq.
Called 26th January, 1870.
n6 C. E. A. Bedwell
1866. 7 Nov. John Richard Davidson, M.A., Edinburgh University,
Member of the Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh,
and of 32 Rutland Square, Edinburgh (30), second
son of the late Charles Forbes D., Esq., of Edin-
burgh, Writer to the Signet.
Called 3Oth April, 1870.
1867. 28 Jan. Andrew Jackson, M.A., University of Edinburgh, and
42 West Square, Southwark (28), fourth son of
Thomas J., of Edinburgh, Midlothian, deed.
17 Apr. Henry Forester Leigh ton (late H.M. Indian Army), of
St. Andrews, Fife (25), only son of Henry John
L., late of Calcutta, merchant.
Called z6th January, 1870.
26 June. David Sutherland, of Calcutta (39), seventh son of the
late Patrick S., of Scotland, and late of Calcutta,
Uncovenanted Service of Government.
Called i yth November, 1870.
9 Nov. Fendall Lowis Charles of Kirkcowan, Wigtonshire,
Scotland (19), selected Candidate for the Civil
Service of India, youngest son of James C., D.D.,
of Kirkcowan, Wigton, N.B., Minister of the
Established Church of Scotland.
1868. 13 Jan. John Hutton Balfour Browne, of 5 James Place,
Leith (22), second son of William Alexander
Francis B., of Broomlands, in the Stewartry of
Kirkcudbright, M.P. and one of H.M. Commis-
sioners in Lunacy for Scotland.
Called loth June, 1870.
6 June William John Cuningham, 9 Chester Street, Edinburgh
(19), sixth son of Alexander C., of Edinburgh,
Writer to the Signet.
9 Nov. Gavin Parker Ness, of Aberdeen University (20), tenth
son of Robert N., senr., of Aberdeen, carriage
manufacturer.
Called 6th June, 1871.
19 Nov. John Brown Thomson, of Edinburgh University and
of 4 Jamaica Street, North Leith (19), eldest son
of the Rev. John T., of 4 Jamaica Street, North
Leith, Edinburgh, clergyman of the Free Church
of Scotland.
1869. 3 May. Patrick Blair, member of the Faculty of Advocates in
Scotland, now District Judge in Jamaica (39),
second son of Patrick B., of Irvine, Ayr, banker.
Scottish Middle Templars 117
1869. 6 May. James Crommelin Brown, of Edinburgh University
(20), only son of John Campbell B., of 16 Carlton
Street, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Bengal Medical
Service.
Called 7th June, 1873.
1 8 Nov. Julius Wood Muir, M.A., Edinburgh, of Dumfries,
Scotland (20), younger son of Robert M., of
Dumfries, Scotland, Solicitor.
Called loth May, 1876.
19 Nov. Alexander Henry Grant, M.A., Aberdeen, and of 58
Bartholomew Road (36), younger son of David
G., of 58 Bartholomew Road, Middlesex, and of
the Marsh, Long Sutton, gent.
24 Nov. The Rt. Hon. George Young, of Edinburgh (50),
only son of Alexander Y., of Rosefield, Kirk-
cudbright.
Called 24th November, 1869. Lord Young. Edinburgh.
The Fenwick Improvement of Knowledge
Society
'Knowledge is the treasure of the soul'
1834-1842
THE Editor of the Scottish Historical Review has to thank
Mr. Hugh Fulton, Pollokshields, Glasgow, for the oppor-
tunity to print the following crisp, concise and racy record of
winter-night debates in the village of Fenwick, in Ayrshire, in
the years between the Reform Act and the repeal of the Corn
Laws. The minute book of the little debating Society of young
men in Fenwick belongs to Mr. Fulton, and its significance was
indicated to the writer of this note by Mr. William Gemmill,
Writer, Glasgow, who shares with Mr. Fulton a keen ancestral
interest in Fenwick and its Reform debates. Accordingly there
is now printed verbatim et literatim the text of the curious little
minute book. It is six inches by four inches, in several hand-
writings, often ill spelt, and worse punctuated, but always brisk
and entertaining, instructively disclosing a decisive and robust
mentality among the young artisans of the Ayrshire village,
situated about four miles from Kilmarnock. The parish, eight
miles in extreme length, and from two to five miles broad, had,
in 1831, a population of 2018. The almost coterminous villages
of Fenwick and Low Fenwick, best known as Laigh Fenwick
from which probably the membership of 'The Fenwick Improve-
ment of Knowledge Society' was mainly recruited, can hardly
have contained more than 500 inhabitants, whose prevalent in-
dustry was weaving.
It is perhaps not surprising that, in the generation which
followed Burns, we should find in an Ayrshire village, sym-
pathy alike with liberty and literature, yet the intensity of
feeling manifest throughout, argues the existence of dominating
inspirations in the minds of the leaders of the coterie which,
Fenwick Improvement of Knowledge Society 1 19
from 1834 until 1842, discuss so many attractive and important
themes. The minutes are a remarkable interpretation of their
time, and could hardly have better conveyed than they have
done, what these village politicians and social critics thought and
said and sang. GEQ NEILSON<
'THHE following persons meet in the house of Hugh Thomson
JL on the 1 6th Deer 1834 and agreed to form themselves
into a Society to be called the Fenwick Improvement of Knowledge
Society, when they agreed to the following articles
Andrew Gemmell Robert Howit
John Kirkland Alexander Armour
James Taylor Alexander Fulton
John Gemmell William Morton
Daniel Love John Fowlds
John Anderson
Article ist. The Club shall meet at Fenwick every second
Friday night when a Question on any subject shall be proposed
(Doctrines of Religion excepted) which Question is to be discussed
in the Club each member taking whatever side he thinks proper.
2nd. The Society being meet the one who presides being
chosen the night previous opens the meeting by stateing the
subject formerly given out for discussion, those haveing written
Essays shall have the precedance.
3d. When the President reads from the Society's Book the
Question to be discussed the Member next the preses on the right
hand shall speak first then the Member next on the other side
shall reply and so on till all the Members shall have given there
opinions and when a smaller number shall be on one side than
another the first speaker on the last side shall be allowed to reply
and so on untill all the opposite side shall have spoken and are
answered no person allowed to speak out of his order without
leave from the precess.
4th. In the time of a debate one only shall be heard at once
and not above fiveteen minutes at a time when he shall give place to
another and so on untill it is finished l any majority shall deter-
mine what side has the merit of the Question.
5th. When the discussions of the Meeting are finished for
night the business of the meeting shall be to choose a President
for next meeting when the President or any other Member shall
1 See Supplement.
120 The Fenwick Improvement
be at liberty to propose any member he thinks fit : if more than
one is proposed the one who has the majority of votes will be
considered elected.
6th. That all private conversation during the debate shall be
strictly prohibited — and all profane and obscene & abusive language
shall be reproved by the president and if persevered in shall exclude
the offender from the Membership of the Society.
yth. That no person shall be allowed to make known any of
the Society's debates for the purpose of ridicule or jest out of the
Society on pain of exclusion.
8th. Any person applying for Membership will be admited
only by consent only of three fourths of the Society : those
having objections to admitance of any individual as a member are
not required to give his reasons for so doing.
9th. Every person alternately may propose any subject he
chooses for the next discussion, which shall be adopted provided
his motion meet the approbation of the meeting.
roth. Any Member absenting himself from the Meeting for
one night forfits one halfpenny ; for two nights, one penny ; for
three nights, two pence ; four nights, exclusion from the Society
without giving a reasonable excuse.
Abrogated.
nth. That at the close of the debate if any Member have
anything valueable to communicate connected with the object of
the Society will be at liberty so to do.
1 2th. No Member who has an Essay the property of the
Society for perusal shall be at liberty to give it in loan or other-
wise shew it to any person who is not a member of the Society.
1 3th. That no fundamental! article of the Society can be altered
or abrogated, nor any of the Society's funds disposed of for any
purpose whatever, without a majority of votes agreeing thereto
and passed for two successive nights of regular meeting, nor any
new article adopted.
SUPPLEMENTARY ARTICLES.
Supp. to Art. 4. Number of votes on each side of any question
to be entered in the minute of meeting and no decision to be
given when they are on a par.
Supp. to Art. 5th. The President shall have a vote along with
the other members, and on a par shall have the casting vote : this
applies to all cases except what comes under Article 4th.
of Knowledge Society 121
A STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECTS DISCUSSED BY
THE SOCIETY.
i st. The Utility of Societys for the Improvement of Knowledge.
2nd. That whither the greatest amount of happiness flows
from Implicit belief or rational and enlightened Conviction.
3d. Whither Riches or genius are most desirable.
4th. Whither Religion supported by voluntary means or by a
civil Establishment is best fitted to promote true Religion.
This last subject was debated three successive Nights : decided
in favour of voluntary means.
5th. Whither the death of Archbishop Sharp was Murder or
Patriotism.
Decided in favour of Patriotism.
6th. Whither Celibacy or a Conjugal life is best fitted to
promote individual happiness.
yth. Whether Monarchial or Republican forms of Civil
Government are best fitted for the People's Welfare.
Decided in favour of Republicanism after two Nights Debate.
8th. What is the best method of Replacing Monarchial Govern-
ments by Republican and Whither by Moral or physical means.
Decided in favor of moral means.
9th. On general Literature.
loth. Whither Open Voting or By Ballot gives the Purest
Elections.
After two nights debate decided in favour of Open Elections.
nth. A Contrast between America and Britain.
1 2th. Whither Abstinence or a Temperate use of Ardent
Spirits is most productive of good.
Decided in favor of Abstinence.
1 3th. Whither human Friendship or Love is most permant.
Decided in favor of Love.
1 4th. Whither Improvement in Machinery would tend to pro-
mote the benefit of Mankind.
Decided in favor of the Improvement of Machinery.
1 5th. The best Method of turning the Benefits of Machinery
to the Interests of the Working Classes.
Decided in favor of the Restrictive Laws being Repealed and
Equality of Priviledge given to all.
1 6th. Octr 1 9th. On the motion of Jas Taylor Whither
fictitious Writings has been beneficial or not in general.
Decided that they have not.
122 The Fen wick Improvement
iyth. Nov 2nd 1835. On the Motion of Wm Morton
Whither is a Town or Country Life Productive of Most Happiness.
Decided in favour of a Towns Life.
1 8th. Novr 1 6th 1835. On the Motion of John Kirkland it
was Agreed to hold a General Conversation on the State of Society.
Thomas Fulton President.
1 9th. Nov 1 6th 1835. On tne motion of Robert Howat
that the Subject for discussion be for the 3Oth Novr That
Whither Real or Imaginary Pleasure in Love and amusement
affords most satisfaction, was agreed to.
Thomas Fulton reelected President for 3<Dth Novr next night.
2oth. 3<Dth Novr Agreed by the Society that John Kirkland's
motion relative to the preasant state of society be resumed on the
1 4th Dec. Thomas Fulton President.
2 1 st. 1 4th December. On the motion of William Morton it
was agreed that the subject of debate be Whether the Drunkard
or the Miser is most miserable.
28th Dec. Alex Fulton President.
Decided that the Drunkard is Most Miserable.
22nd. 28th Deer 1835. On the Motion of James Taylor,
agreed to take a Retrospective View of 1835, f°r Janr IItn l^3^-
Alex Fulton, President.
23rd. nth Janr 1836. On the Motion of John Kirkland
agreed that it be debated on the 25th of Janr Whether the once
popular Doctrine of Ghosts and Witches have any claims on the
beleif of Mankind.
Robt. Orr President.
Decided that they have none.
24th. 25th Janr 1836. On the Motion of John Kirkland
agreed that it be debated on the 8th Febr Whether Poetry or
Music has the strongest effect on the passions. Robt Orr
President.
Decided that Poetry has the strongest effect.
25th. 8th Febr 1836. On the Motion of William Morton,
agreed that the utility of Abstinent Societies from all ardent
spirits be discused on the 22nd Febr. Alex Armour President.
Decided to be of great utility.
26th. 22nd Febr 1836. On the Motion of James Taylor
agreed that it be debated on the yth March whether Tobacco
so extensively used as at preasant be beneficial to the Community.
Alex Fulton President.
Decided that it is highly prejudicial.
of Knowledge Society 123
27th. yth March 1836 On the Motion of John Brown
agreed that it be debated on the 2ist March What denomination
of Christians is most scriptural and best suited for the benifit of
mankind in goverment and discipline. Alex Fulton President.
Decided in favour of Presbyterianism.
28th. 2 ist March 1836. On the Motion of William Morton
agreed that it be debated on the 4th April Whether a public
speaker posessed of great oratorial powers with common talents
or one posessed of great talents but destitute of oratory is most
beneficial to his hearers. John Brown President.
Decided in favour of the one possesed of great talent.
29th. 4th April. On the Motion of James Taylor agreed
that it be debated on the i8th April Whether is generally the
most successfull in Life the Modest or the Impudent Man.
John Brown President.
Decided in favour of Modesty.
29th. 1 8th April. On the Motion of John Brown, Agreed
that it be debated on the 2d of May 1836 Would it be Beneficial
to Britian to extend the Franchise and to what extent.
John Kirkland President.
Decided that household Suffrage in present exigences is most
expedient but universal every man's right and most Benificial.
30th. 2d May. On the Motion of Robt Howat 2nd May
agreed that it be debated on the i6th May 1836 Whether the
loss of love or the loss of Riches is the worst to bear.
James Taylor President.
Decided that the loss of Love is worst to bear.
3 1 st. On the Motion of James Taylor i6th May, agreed
that it be debated on the 3Oth May 1836 How does missfortune
generally operate upon Mankind ? whether does it increase or
diminish the energy of the soul ?
Thomas Fulton President.
Decided that it generally diminishes the energy of the soul.
32nd. 3oth May. On the Motion of John Gemmell agreed
that it be debated on the I3th June 1336 Whether the feeling
that the cultivation of natural science is inimicall to the interests
of religion be a prejudice or a well-founded opinion ?
Alexr Armour President.
Decided that it is a prejudice.
33d. 1 3th June. On the Motion of John Kirkland agreed
that it be debated on the 2yth June 1836 Whether the bright-
ness of the riseing morn or the calm serenity of closeing day are
124 The Fenwick Improvement
best calculated to awake contemplation and excite the finest and
most pleasing sensations and enjoyments.
Alexr Armour President.
Division Equall.
34th. 27th June 1836. On the motion of Danniel Love
agreed that it be debated on the nth July Whether generaU
Sociality or general Solitude is productive of most happiness to
Man. Decided in favour of generral Solitude.
35th. iith July. On the Motion of Wm Morton agreed
that it be debated on the 25th July 1836 Whether trades Unions
as at present existing in this Country be advantages or inimicall
to the Interests of trade. Alexr Armour President.
Decided that they are inimicall.
36th. 25th July 1836. On the Motion of Andrew Gemmell,
agreed that it be debated on the 8th Agust Whether Marriage
ought to be a Lay or a Clericall ceremony.
Alex Fulton President.
This subject postponed till the 22nd Agust was decided to
be a civil Ceremony.
37th. 22nd Agust 1836. On the Motion of William Morton
agreed that it be debated on the 5th Sept Whether Mankind
will use the greatest exertions to obtain good or avoid evil. Alexr
Armour President.
Not Decided.
38th. 5th Sept. On the Motion of James Taylor Agreed
that it be discussed on the I9th Sept 1836 Whether War or
Intemperence has been most hurtful to the Human Race for the
last hundred years. Alexander Armour President.
This discussion was left over till the 3d of October.
Decided that Intemperance has been most hurtfull to the human
race for zoo years past.
Octr 3. Oweing to want of accomodation the Society agreed to
postpone all Discussion untill proper accomodation is secured.
39th. 3 ist Octr. On the Motion of James Taylor Agreed
that it be debated on the I4th Novr Whether Superstition or
Enthusiasm are most to be dreaded in Society.
Robert Howat President.
Decided that Superstition is most to be dreaded.
4Oth. Nov. 1 4th. On the Motion of James Taylor to be
debated Whether it would be most beneficial to Britian to
dispense with the house of Peers or with Ireland, on the 28th
of Nov. William Fulton Chairman.
of Knowledge Society 125
Novr 28th. Discussion postponed till Deer 12.
Deer 1 2th. Further postponement till the 26th.
41. Dec 26th. The Society took into consideration their
present languishing condition when after hearing various sugges-
tions for a revival it was agreed to resume the subject on Janry 9
1837 Janry 9.
42. Janry 9. In pursuance of the recomendation of last meet-
ing the society again took up the subject of a revival, when it was
decided that in future each member should have a particular
department of science or literature on which he should speak or
write as convenience might dictate.
43. Janry 23rd. The society met when an essay on the
seasons was read by James Taylor.
Robert Orr President.
44. February 6. The society met when an essay on the effects
of litterature on society was read by Andw Gemmell William
Morton President.
45. February 20. The motion of John Kirkland that the
society resume the practice of having a specific subject of
discussion was carried for a first time.
46. Also on the motion of James Taylor agreed that on
March 6 it be discussed what is the best method of dealing with
opinions based only on prejudice.
Robert Howat President.
Decided in favour of sound argument properly expressed.
47. March 6th. The society met and finally carried John
Kirklands motion, at the same time resolving to hear any essays
though not connected with the subject of discussion.
On the motion of William Morton agreed that on the 2oth
March the lawfulness and propriety of blood-eating be discussed.
Robert Orr President.
Decided that as far as the subject is at present understood, it is
lawful.
48. March 2Oth. Agreed that on April 3 the society shall hear
whatever miscelaneous essays may be brought forward. James
Taylor President.
William Fulton to be next President.
49. April 3rd. The society heard an extract from an essay on
the moral state of London, read by Willian Morton. Also a
discourse on Astronomy by Thomas Fulton and agreed that he
resume the subject on April 17 William Fulton President.
Robert Howat to be next President.
126 The Fenwick Improvement
50. April i yth. Thomas Fultons discourse postponed and an
essay read by Andw Gemmell on the influence of litterature in
the formation of character.
On the motion of John Gemmell agreed to discuss on May ist
the comparative advantages of a metallic or a paper currency.
William Fulton to be President.
51. May i st. Decided in favour of a paper currency, so
regulated, that the fabrication and issue would be confined to the
government.
Agreed that on May I5th Thos Fulton resume his discourse
on Astronomy William Fulton to be Presid.
May 15. No meeting.
52. May 29. Heard an essay by Andw Gemmell on the in-
fluence of early habits and associations in the formation of character.
Agreed to hear on June I2th specimens of poetry from any or
all of the tory poets read by Jas Taylor with an equal number of
equal merit from L d Byron alone to be read by Andw
Gemmell. Willm Clark to be President.
53. June 12. After hearing extracts from Coleridge on the
part of the tories decided in favour of L d Byron.
On the motion of Alexr Fulton agreed to discuss on June 26th
the propriety of legislation for the Sabbath. Willm Clark to be
Presid.
54. June 26th. Decided that all civil interferance with the
sabbath is improper, but unanimously reject the absurd notion
that there is no moral obligation for its observance.
On the motion of John Kirkland agreed to discuss on July loth
whether love is productive of most pain or pleasure John Kirk-
land to be President.
55. July loth. No decision numbers being equal.
On the motion of John Kirkland agreed to discuss on July 24th
the utility of having all the land public property. Matthew
Fulton to be President.
56. July 24th. No decision but adjourned the discussion till
August 2 1 st.
On the motion of Willm Morton agreed to discuss on August
7th whether the fashionable amusements of the present day are
entitled to the appelation of innocent and whether they are strictly
moral in their nature and tendencies and how far they are so.
John Gemmell Junr to be President.
57. August 7th. Unanimously adopted the following resolu-
tion : That some amusements are not entitled to the appelation
of Knowledge Society 127
of either innocent or moral but that many are so, in so far as they
are conducive to mental or physical health and do not encroach
upon the time which should be devoted to religion ; or business.
Agreed in pursuance of the adjournment from July 24th to
resume the subject of that night's discussion on August 2ist
Robert Howat to be President.
58. August 21. Decided for the negative by 4 against 2, one
not voting present 7.
On the motion of Robert Howat agreed to discuss whether the
greatest amount of pleasure is afforded by the eye or the ear
William Fulton to be President.
This discussion to be on Sept 4.
59. Unanimous that the eye affords most pleasure ; present 8.
September 4. On the motion of John Gemmell Senr agreed to
discuss on Sept 1 8 whether (with religion excepted) the European
discovery of America has been beneficial or prejudicial to be the
oborigenes of that continent. John Gemmell Junr to be President.
60. Sept 18:7 voted that it has been prejudicial ; 2 did not
vote ; present 9.
On the motion of John Kirkland agreed to discuss on Oct. 2
what effect the present embarrassments in Britain may have upon
the peoples morals. John Kirkland to be President.
61. Oct. 2. Decided unanimously that temporary embarrass-
ment may have a good tendency, but if long continued will
invariably produce immorality.
On the motion of Willm Morton agreed to discuss on Oct 16
that subject formerly treated No 3 whether riches or genius are
most desirable Robert Howat to be President.
62. Oct. 1 6. Unanimous in favour of genius.
On the motion of Alexr Fulton agreed that the subject of dis-
cussion for Oct. 30 be Who has the right to determine when a
people are fitted for the full possession of their political rights.
Thomas Fulton to be President.
63. Oct. 30. Unanimous that the people themselves are the
only judges.
On the motion of James Taylor agreed to discuss on Nov 13
whether Worth — Beauty — or Riches is most likely to be an
inducement to the mass of mankind in choosing a partner for life
John Gemmell Junr to be President.
64. Nov. 13. Beauty 5, Riches i, Worth o ! present 6.
On the motion of John Kirkland agreed that Nov 27 be
devoted to literarv conversation Willm Fulton to be President.
128 The Fenwick Improvement
65. Nov 27. After hearing several pieces in prose and verse,
and discussing their merits ; agreed on the motion of John
Kirkland that the question for Deer 1 1 be what has been the
moral effect of the poetry of the last 100 years Willm Fulton
to be President.
66. Deer 1 1. Agreed that the subject be resumed on Deer 25
Willm Fulton to be President.
67. Deer 25. Decided that the moral effect of Poetry during
the period specified has been upon the whole good.
No subject of discussion appointed for next meeting on Janry 8
1838.
1838
Janry ist. The society in conjunction with the Fenwick vocal
club met in John Kirkland's house and sat down to an excellent
supper after which the following toasts were given and duly
honoured.
From the chair : The sovereignty of the people. John
Kirkland then gave The new year, prefaced by a talented
original poem commemorative of the events of the past year and
anticipating those of the ensuing, in a most graphic and poetical
style, after which the Club sung the New Year : the chairman
next called on John Kirkland to read an original poem on the late
elections.
John Gemmell then gave universal suffrage prefaced by an
essay intended to prove the peoples right to that privilege : the
Club then sung an anthem on the 23rd psal.
William Taylor then sung the lass of Gowrie in fine style.
James Taylor then read an essay on the question whether Worth,
Beauty, or Riches is most likely to influence mankind in making
matrimonial treatys. The Croupier then gave The speedy separa-
tion of Church and State.
The club next sung Fair Flora decks, &c Robert Howat then
sung, How sair's my heart nae man shall ken.
An anthem from the 7th chap of Job was next sung by the
Club.
James Taylor then gave success to the Canadians in their
patriotic struggle for independence which he accompanied with a
speech detailing their wrongs and proving their right to self-
government An essay was then read by Robert Howat draw-
ing a paralel between the pleasures derived from the eye and
the ear.
of Knowledge Society 129
John Gemmell then gave the memory of Sir William Wallace
the immortal defender of Scotland's independence accompanied by
some remarks animadverting on the ungrateful conduct of Scots-
men in too much neglecting the memory of one, from whose
patriotic sacrifices they derive all the political privileges they
enjoy.
Alex Dunlop then sung in fine style Wallace's lament after the
battle of Falkirk.
Willm Taylor then sung John Anderson my Jo, John.
Jas Taylor then read an essay from the pen of Willm Morton.
The Club next sung Conquest.
Willm Taylor then gave the health of Dr. Bowring, prefaced
by a speech detailing the many services rendered to the country
by that patriotic gentleman.
John Kirkland Senr being called on for a toast gave Health,
Wealth, and Freedom, a freind at hand but seldom need him.
Alex Fulton then after an eloquent speech gave the health of
R. Wallace Esqr M.P. for Greenock and Post office reform,
followed by the song, the Greenock post in splendid style by
Alexr Dunlop.
John Kirkland read an original poem on winter, which was
received with enthusiastic applause.
Ayrshire lasses was next given by William Fulton, prefaced by
an elegant speech every way worthy of the toast, followed by the
song she says she loe's me best O' a' by Alexr Dunlop. In the
absence of the fair sex R Howat made a most humourous, and at
the same time most appropriate reply.
John Hamilton then proposed the health of Baillie H Craig
Kilmarnock.
James Taylor proposed the healths of the Drs Black and Baillie
Willm Craig of Glasgow.
James Kirkland proposed the health of Mr Robertson Writer
Kilmarnock.
Alexr Dunlop then proposed the memories of the last Scottish
martyrs for liberty Baird, Hardie, and Wilson.
Matth Fulton gave the memories of the Scottish reformers of
1793 and 4.
The healths of Mr Hume and the other radicals of the house
of Commons was then given by Alexr Fulton.
Honest men and bonny lasses was then given from the chair.
James Taylor then gave the speedy adoption of republican
principles throughout the world.
130 The Fen wick Improvement
Robett Howat then proposed the health of the chairman and
James Taylor that of the Croupier.
Thomas Fulton Chairman
Robert Orr Croupier
Robert Howat John Gemmell
Alexr Fulton William Fulton
James Kirkland James Taylor
John Hamilton Andrew Fulton
William Taylor
Matth. Fulton
Alexr Dunlop
John Kirkland Senr
John Kirkland Junr
1838
68th. January 8th. There being no subject for discussion
Hazlett's Essay on the conversation of authors was read and
highly approved.
On the motion of James Taylor agreed to discuss on Janry 22nd
Whether man will sacrifice more for his country, or the object of
his fondest affection.
William Fulton to be President.
69th. Janry 22. From the annual business of the society taking
more time than was expected, the subject for discussion was post-
poned till Feb 5.
William Fulton to be President.
yoth. Feb. 5th. The subject postponed from January 22 was
taken up, when the numbers were, for the influence of Love
being strongest 6, for Patriotism 3, present 9.
On the motion of John Kirkland agreed that on Feb 19 the
question for discussion be Whether selfishness in the rulers ; or
ignorance in the people has most retarded the progress of liberty.
John Anderson to be President
7 1 st. Feb 19. For attaching blame to rulers 5, ignorance of
the people 3, Neutral i, present 9.
Agreed on the motion of William Morton that on March 5th
the question for discussion be What is the * sphere which the
female sex ought to occupy in society — Do they at present occupy
it — And if not what will be the result upon the destinies of man-
kind when they shall do so. John Anderson to be President.
72. March 5th. That they enjov all the political privileges to
which they are entitled 5, that they do not 3, neutral i, present 9.
* Word ' proper ' has here been erased but is still legible.
of Knowledge Society 131
Agreed that the meeting on March 19 be occupied by reading
a portion of Hazlett's Plain Speaker. John Gemmell Junr to be
President.
73. March 19. Read the 4th and 5th essays of the fore-
mentioned work.
On the motion of John Kirkland agreed to discuss on April
2nd whether in such times as the present ; passive obedience or
active resistance ; is most a people's duty.
Matthew Fulton to be President.
74. April 2. Unanimous that the existing greivances of
Great Britain fully justifies active resistance.
On the motion of John Gemmell Senr agreed to discuss on
April 1 6th whether the works of Dr Smollett or those of
Sir Walter Scott are most likely to raise a spirit of rational
enterprise in the mind of reader. John Gemmell Junr to be
President.
April 1 6th. Meeting postponed to the 3<Dth.
75. April 3Oth. In consequence of other business regular
discussion not entered into.
76. May I4th. No discussion. Agreed to present James
Kirkland with a copy of the life and poems of Michael Bruce (by
McKelvie) as a small token of gratitude for the accomodation he
has given the society during the past year.
77. May 28th. The committee appointed to purchase the
foresaid book reported their having done so and were reappointed
to have it suitably inscribed and forwarded to its destination.
June nth. No meeting.
78. June 25th. Discussed the question standing over since
April 1 6th see minute of 74 meeting.
No decision.
Agreed on the motion of R. Howat that the question for dis-
cussion on July 9th be Whether the works of nature or art are best
calculated to produce admiration. William Fulton to be Presid.
79. July 9th. After hearing one of Foster's essays, adjourned
the discussion till July 23rd. Willm Fulton to be President.
80. July 23rd. Decided that the works of nature are best
calculated to produce admiration, by 5, against 2, present 7.
On the motion of John Gemmell Senr agreed that on August
6th Howit's essay on the radical tendency of almost all the
modern poetry of Great Britain, be read. John Gemmell Senr to
be President.
August 6th. No meeting.
132 The Fenwick Improvement
8 i. August 2Oth. Read the essay ordered by Both meeting
and unanimously found it to prove the position assumed.
On the motion of John Kirkland agreed to discuss on Sept. 3rd
whether a high toned morality is most likely to be preserved in
an agricultural ; or a manufacturing and commercial ; community.
Willm Fulton to be President.
Sept 3rd. No meeting.
82. Sept 17. Discussed the subject ordered by 8ist meeting
and concluded that in a community where justice is done to all
classes there will be very little difference.
Agreed that Octr ist be devoted to a geological conversation
and that all members bring forward whatever specimens of petri-
factions or other mineral productions they can procure as illus-
trative of the opinions they may propound (James Taylor to be
Chairman).
83. Oct i st. The society met for the geological discussion,
when there was a splendid exhibition of petrifactions, chiefly from
the channel of the Fenwick rivulet with some very fine pebbles
from various parts of Scotland. From want of time to read
several scientific articles, it was agreed to resume the subject
October I5th. James Taylor to Preside.
Oct 1 5th. No Meeting.
84. Oct 29th. The society met when an essay was read (from
'Chambers Journal' No 336 of date July yth 1838) on travelled
stones, or the probable means by which large fragments of rock
were moved to places far remote from their original site, and
became what are called boulders. There was also read extracts
from the Edinburgh Journal of Natural History on the formation
of sandstone.
Agreed that the subject be resumed November i2th. James
Taylor to be President.
85. Nov 1 2th. The society met when the members in turn
gave their opinion on several facts brought under notice in the
Geological articles lately read in the meetings.
Agreed that on November 26th the Resolution of Oct 29th be
brought into operation viz That every member bring forward,
and read to the meeting some written article either original or
copied. Peter Gemmell to be Chairman.
86. Nov 26. In consequence of the resolution referred to
in minute of last meeting there was forward 9 papers, 8 copied,
I original, attendance 9.
Agreed to discuss on Deer loth the advantages likely to result
of Knowledge Society 130
from frequent exercise in writing and original composition John
Fulton to be Chairman.
87. Deer loth. After hearing a good deal in favour of
writing the members were unanimous in opinion that besides
advantages too numerous to be specified it improved the style,
promoted the concentration of ideas and altogether enabled an
individual to reduce more readily to a system of principles, what-
ever knowledge he may have an opportunity of acquiring.
Agreed that on Deer 24th each member bring forward a piece
of writing either original or copied John Blundell to be
Chairman.
88. Deer 24th. Forward 9: papers, copied; attendance n.
Made arrangements for a social meeting with a few friends,
not members of the society on the night of Janry ist.
1839
In conformity with the practice introduced at the commencement
of 1838 of having an annual social meeting at the beginning of
each year the Society along with a few friends met in the house
of John Taylor Lower Fenwick when after an elegant supper the
following toasts were given and duly honoured
From the chair, The sovreignty of the people, prefaced by a
speech on the bad effects of governments being founded on any
other basis.
Robert Howat then gave, The speedy adoption of a general
and reformed system of National Education. Accompanied by a
speech drawing a paralel between our present parochial system
and that adopted by some of the continental states greatly to the
advantage of the latter.
John Kirkland gave, The Messrs Chambers and their cheap
publications, prefaced by a speech contrasting the advantages
enjoyed by the mass of the people in the present time with those
of the commonly called Augustan age of Addison, Swift, and
Steele.
Recitation Eliza, by William Morton.
John Fulton Junr gave, The speedy diffusion of Scientific
Knowledge among the body of the people. Introduced by a
speech shewing the advantageous Revolution, moral, mental, and
physical, to be expected from such diffusion.
Alexr Dunlop then gave, Elliot and the other living British
Poets. Accompanied by a speech in which he shewed that though
civilization has derived signal advantages from the cultivation of
134 The Fenwick Improvement
poetry in every age, yet the poets of the present day are pre-
eminent for a spirit of genuine liberty and pure morality and the
great Elliot, — unlike many who have ' heaped the shrine of
luxury and pride with incense kindled at the muses flame ' — has
taken the sacred fire to blast and destroy those institutions which
have been the means of holding in slavish subjection the major
part of mankind to a domineering minority.
A song, by William Taylor.
Willm Morton gave the speedy triumph of the National move-
ment, prefaced by a speech of which the following resolution is an
epitome. Moved by W Morton, and carried unanimously to be
entered in the societys book
Resolved, That we as a society formed for the improvement of
knowledge hail with the most intense feelings of approbation,
satisfaction, and delight the present movement characterised as
the national movement, for universal suffrage &c which we believe
to be founded upon the immutable principles of truth and Justice,
calculated to promote — to an untold of extent, and in the most
emphatic sense of the words — the improvement of knowledge, and
destined to raise man to that state of freedom and dignity which
his nature bespeaks him entitled to occupy.
A Song of Liberty by Alexr Dunlop.
Andrew Gemmell then gave the memory of Milton with the
speedy adoption of Republican principles, accompanied by a
luminous speech depicting the character of that great man and
shewing him worthy of being the glory and boast of England ;
whether viewed as Poet, Prosaic author, Patriot, or Statesman,
as also the good effects likely to ensue from the universal adop-
tion of that form of government which is identified with his great
name.
Song, Bruces address, by Alexr Dunlop.
John Gemmell Senr then gave, the memory of Sir William
Wallace and the other martyrs for British liberty. Prefaced by a
speech shewing that the benefits secured by this Prince of political
martyrs extend to the most remote age and country, and that by
him were the British islands freed from the chains then forgeing
for them by the subversion of Scottish independence, nay even
Europe, & America are in no very remote degree indebted to his
splendid sacrifices for what liberty they posess. An attempt was
also made to free the Revd Jas Ren wick from the charge lately
prefered by a popular writer of being rather a martyr to his own
bigotry than to the cause of religious liberty.
of Knowledge Society 135
Song, Wallace's lament, by Alexr Dunlop.
James Taylor gave, The speedy success of the Canadian
struggle for emancipation from British thraldom, Introduced by
a speech shewing the evil effect at all times of a people being
subject to a foreign power and the governors no way responsible
to the governed, but particularly when that power is directed by
a faction who have trampled on every principle of Justice at home,
and sent out such bloodhounds as Sir George Arthur & Sir John
Colborne to subdue and govern what they are pleased to call an
insurgent colony. After giving a vivid picture of the distresses
of the people under such management he sat down, and the toast
was most enthusiastically honoured.
Song The Tyrolese song of liberty, by A Dunlop.
Alexander Fulton gave Mr John R. Robertson of the Ayrshire
Examiner, and the liberal press. Prefaced by a speech, shewing
that writers on national affairs have had an influence over them
at all times either malignant or benign, as they happened to be
the friends or foes of rational liberty, but particularly since the
invention of printing, the press has become a most powerful
engine in leading a people either to the dungeons of despotism or
the fresh green fields of freedom. And particularly the Ayrshire
Examiner, deserved our warmest support from its adaptation for
exposing tyranny and fraud in our own locality.
An original Poem, recited by John Kirkland.
1 Andrew Gemmell gave the memory of Robert Burns, the
Ayrshire Poet.
Prefaced by a speech, in which the tory claim lately put forth
by Dr Memes (that the republican bard was a tory) had its absurd
fallacy exposed and ridiculed.
Song Bruce's address, by Alexr Dunlop.
James Kirkland gave the memory of
Lord Byron
In doing which, he took the opportunity to make some remarks
on the nature and tendency of his writings, in which he shewed
that though some parts were objectionable, yet taken, all in all,
they were highly calculated to improve human nature, morally,
intellectually, and physically.
Song The Arabian Maid, by Willm Taylor.
William Fulton Senr gave the speedy repeal of the Corn-laws.
In doing which he remarked, that besides the evils moral, and
physical, entailed upon the country by our commercial system, it
4 Andrew Gemmell proposed Byron & James Kirkland, Burns.
136 The Fen wick Improvement
was very impolitic, as in the sacrifice of all other interests for the
good of one, it also would fall.
Recitation by Andw Gemmell.
John Gemmell Junr gave The Revd Patrick Brewster and the
other clergymen who have taken a part in the present movement
In doing which he shewed that this little band deserved our
esteem, from having come forward in the cause of liberty, when
most of their order stood aloof, and that the gentleman named
was the only endowed clergyman, that we were aware of, taking
any part in the peoples cause.
William Taylor gave William Howat, and the downfal of
Priestcraft ;
Introduced by a speech shewing the enormous evils inflicted on
mankind in all ages by priestcraft, and the consequent obligation
we lie under to the man, who having rent the veil of superstitious
veneration, that enshrouded them, has laid bare their enormities
and made it the peoples own fault ; if they are longer imposed on,
by them.
Peter Gemmell gave, Dr Bowring and Universal philanthropy.
Prefaced by a speech, shewing what a paradise this world would
become, were such a principle the prevailing motive of action, and
proving from his services that the distinguished individual named
has a claim to be ranked among the greatest pioneers in clearing
away the barriers that oppose the introduction of such a felicitous
era.
John Blundell gave, The prevalence of Harmony and Peace,
throughout the world.
Prefaced by some pertinent remarks on the evils of War, and
consequent happiness attending a state of universal peace.
James Taylor gave the memory of
Shakespeare.
Introduced by some critical remarks on the liberal tendency of
his writings, for though he lived in a semi-barbarous age patronised
by an imperious queen and in consequence had to be a flatterer of
royalty, he has also been its satirist, shewing most of its representa-
tives whom he has brought upon the stage as weak, foolish, or
wicked ; and thus considering time and circumstances, deserves to
stand in the same niche, with Milton, as a great and glorious
emancipator of the human mind.
Matthew Fulton gave The health of Hugh Craig esqr the
county delegate to the National Convention. Which he intro-
duced by a speech shewing the importance of the present movement,
of Knowledge Society 137
and the Convention to which it has given rise, with some remarks
on the wisdom of the people of Ayrshire in choosing for their
representative a man ever ready to promote not only this, but
every movement likely to benefit the working classes.
The old man's address to the moon, recited by John Kirkland,
Its Author.
Robert Howat gave the speedy elevation of the fair sex to their
proper place in society.
Introduced by a speech depicting the evils resulting from female
depression as exhibited in the savage state, and though they have
not yet attained their proper place in civilised Christian society,
yet what they have gained and the happy effects resulting there-
from prove that both Christianity and civilization are in their
favour, which certainly would with this society be decisive proof,
that woman should be no longer held as inferior to her bearded
compeer.
Recitation, The mothers address to her son on enlisting for a
soldier by Andrew Gemmell.
John Taylor, John Fulton Senr, Andrew Fulton and Matthew
Dunlop, who favoured the meeting with their company, gave each
a toast but not being in the previous arrangement they cannot be
got for insertion.
Thomas Fulton Chairman John Fulton Senr Croupier
It is thought unnecessary to add a list of the names as they are
to be found in the report.
(To be continued.']
Reviews of Books
DIARY OF SIR ARCHIBALD JOHNSTON OF WARISTON. Vol. II. 1650-
1654. Edited from the Original Manuscript, with Notes and Intro-
duction by David Hay Fleming, LL.D. Pp. lii, 336. Demy 8vo.
Edinburgh : Scottish History Society. 1919.
THIS is the third instalment of the Diary of Lord Wariston to be edited
by the Scottish History Society. A fragment, belonging to the period
from May 1639 to August 1640, was printed in a miscellaneous volume
for the years 1896-97, and a more substantial portion, dealing with the
years 1632-1634 and 1637-1639, was edited by Sir G. M. Paul in 1911.
The present volume, covering (with gaps) the period from 1640 to 1654 's
printed from MSS. known to exist when Sir George Paul's volume
was being prepared, but, in the interval, the Society has made an unfor-
tunate alteration in the appearance of its publications, and the subscriber is
irritated by possessing Vol. I. of the Diary in the familiar blue binding
and Vol. II. in the red of the second series, and is left to speculate what a
third volume will be like should the Council decide (as we hope it will)
that the rest of the MS. is worth printing.
We cannot understand why there should have been, or should be, any
hesitation about printing the whole Diary, subject to such wise discretion
as the editor of this volume has exercised. * Will any human soul ever
again love poor Wariston, and take pious pains with him in this world ? '
asked Carlyle. Dr. Hay Fleming may be able to answer the first part of
the question ; he and Sir George Paul have given an adequate reply to the
second part. It is not a question of loving Wariston, but of loving historical
investigation, and Wariston's Diary is a most important source for a
troubled period of Scottish history. His personality is, of course, not
without its interest, partly as a study in religious psychology. The present
volume contains no such remarkable revelation as his acknowledgment,
in 1638, of the Lord's particular care and providence 'in casting in my
lap, during al my wants and sumptuous expenses of building and spending,
ever aboundance of moneys albeit perteining to uthers ' — trust funds which
he hoped, by further providences, to be able to repay. Indeed, the effect
of this statement (it can hardly be called a confession) is distinctly lessened
by some of his estimates of his own short-comings in the later portion of
the Diary. General and vague confessions of sinfulness rarely give the
impression of genuine feeling, but Wariston accuses himself of definite
sins of which he was obviously guilty, and the passages in which
he does so are written with an honest regret which disposes, at all
Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston 139
events, one sinner to think more kindly of another than he was inclined
to do.
Wariston was certainly one of the men who allow their good to be evil
spoken of, and he created an atmosphere of distrust of his character and
intentions, a distrust which was frequently, or even usually, unjustified,
and probably arose from a habit of foolish talking. He could not, he
complained, tell anything, past, present or future, without * som act of my
fancye and carnal affection adding or pairing or chaynging circumstances
unto what I would haive.' A congenital incapacity to tell the plain truth
about things indifferent is not incompatible with trustworthiness in things
that matter, but the outer world tends to pass a harsh judgment about that
incapacity. The suspicion that Wariston was a traitor in 1651 probably
originated in some impatient and unadvised expression. We agree that there
is no convincing reason for entertaining this suspicion, and if the accusation
is true, the Diary becomes unintelligible. Wariston, indeed, seems to
have been bold enough to beard Cromwell himself. When Cromwell
told him that he would not turn his foot to gain Lord Wariston or any
other in Scotland, Wariston retorted that he was not worth the gaining,
but that Cromwell's gain, such as it was, would be the loss of a better
master, and added the pertinent comment that reflections on nations are
not civil.
Perhaps the most interesting information in the Diary is that Wariston
helped to draft the Solemn League and Covenant, but it contains much
that is of interest in connexion with the relations between the Covenanters
and Charles II., the rise of the Remonstrants, the treatment of the Scottish
records by Cromwell, and other topics. It is needless to praise the editor's
Introduction and Notes ; possibly Dr. Hay Fleming might be able to
detect errors in them, but they certainly give the reader the help he
ROBERT S. RAIT.
BRITISH SUPREMACY AND CANADIAN SELF-GOVERNMENT, 1839-1854.
By J. L. Morison, M.A., D. Litt., Professor of Colonial History in
Queen's University, Kingston, Canada ; Late Lecturer on English
Literature in the University of Glasgow. Pp. xiv, 369. Post 8vo.
Glasgow : James MacLehose & Sons. 1919. 8s. 6d. net.
A DISTINGUISHED historian affirms that in the sixteen years of Canadian
administration, 1839 to 1854, the experiment was made which decided for
centuries the future of the British Empire. Britain had lost her American
colonies in the eighteenth century, Spain her splendid possessions early
in the nineteenth. But a new and greater British colonial Empire was
growing up. Was it too to be lost to the mother-country ? Many believed
it was. When Queen Victoria succeeded in 1837 there had just been an
armed rebellion in Canada, and her ministers postponed a coercion act
that it might not be the first act of her reign.
Professor Morison begins with an account of the Canadian community.
In Roman Catholic Lower Canada education and politics were dominated
by the priesthood. The majority could not read or write, though the
140 Morison : British Supremacy and
women were trained in the convents to activity and usefulness. In Pro-
testant Upper Canada there was an enterprising newspaper press, but
ecclesiastical sectarian controversy did * infinite harm ' to the cause of
education. In politics the 'Loyalists,' a minority, had long been supreme.
They held to a Conservative upper house, an executive council chosen
from their own class, the suppression of French Canadian feeling as
rebellious and un-English, and power to be shared between themselves
and the Governor-General. All the officers of government were inde-
pendent of the elected Assembly. Meanwhile immigrants were flocking
in from the United States accustomed to free institutions, and from Britain
and Ireland determined to have them. The majority wished the union of
the two provinces, for British Canada was cut off from the sea by the
French province, which got more than its share of the duties and profits
of the overseas commerce, and they demanded, what had hitherto been
denied to the colony, Canadian control of Canadian finance, trade and
land ; and, of this last, especially of the ' Clergy Reserves,' which hampered
every settlement. These agrarian troubles were the worst. The eccle-
siastical sects quarrelled and fought over the Reserves with the tenacity of
the lady in Sancho Panza's famous judgment. Lord Sydenham, when
Governor-General, called them c the root of all the troubles in the province,
the cause of the rebellion, . . . the perpetual source of discord, strife and
hatred.' But more than half of the population called for representative
government because they hoped by means of it to get rid of the British
connection. Many wished union with the democratic United States.
The French of Lower Canada, wedded to their feudal seignorial government,
and confirmed in it by their priests, were stubbornly opposed to British
and United States alike.
In 1839 Lord Durham was made Governor-General of the two
Canadas, and commissioned to enquire into all questions depending with
respect to their future government. His famous Report, made with the
help of his secretaries, Buller and Wakefield, is one of the ablest documents
ever laid before Parliament. But it pleased neither province. It recom-
mended their union, and the grant of responsible government, with
reserves. Britain kept the control of all money votes, the administration and
the revenues of public lands, and the regulation of trade with herself
and with foreign countries. The French Canadians were to be absorbed
and ruled by the British, the colonial executive was not to be fully subject
to the colonial parliament. Upper and Lower Canada were duly united
by act of the Imperial Parliament in 1840.
Professor Morison devotes a chapter each to an account of the labours,
the difficulties and the disappointments of the three Governors-General
who in succession followed Durham — Sydenham, the would-be benevolent
despot ; Bagot, the genial diplomatist, and Metcalfe, the able and
honourable public servant. Each had a brief career marred by phy-
sical suffering. All three came and went within six years, the last
completing in confusion and failure the demonstration of the impossibility
of the position. The alternative in Canada was now clear — self-govern-
ment, or rebellion to be probably followed by annexation to the United
Canadian Self-Government 141
States. Lord Elgin, the hero of Professor Morison's book, became
Governor-General in 1847.
The conditions in Canada during these years cannot be reduced to
the simple proposition of a people believing themselves oppressed struggling
for liberty. They were as complex as human desires. To be understood
they must be studied with assiduity and patience in the contemporary
records. Thus Professor Morison has studied them. And the result is
his picture of the evolution of the policy which shaped the unimagined
future of the British Empire.
Lord Elgin, in his seven years of office, changed all the currents. He
was shrewd, tactful, genial, and gifted with a sense of humour and the
capacity to see the other side of any question. One-third of the colony
were his fellow Scots, and he knew, as the author says, that Britons,
abroad as at home, must have liberty to misgovern themselves. Gradually
applying, with cautious skill, the principle of laissez faire, which Great
Britain had adopted with Free Trade in 1846, he established democratic
government in Canada. That government consisted in practical Home
Rule, theoretical and vague supremacy. He allowed free institutions to
evolve themselves. British supremacy remained a pious opinion.
In his last chapter Professor Morison eloquently describes the conse-
quences of Canadian autonomy, which confirm Burke's teaching that a free
government is what the governed think free, and that people do not
trouble much about logical theory so long as they are happy. Liberty
increased loyalty by removing every motive for separation, and Canada,
proudly conscious of being a free individual nation, scouted the possibility
of annexation to the United States, and recalled old ties and affection, and
the old debt to the mother-country for protection and help.
No country takes more pains than Canada to collect and preserve its
historical records, and none is more courteous in opening its archives to the
competent enquirer. Professor Morison has availed himself of the collec-
tions in Ottawa, Kingston and elsewhere, and has written what is not only
a brilliant historical treatise, but an opportune contribution to the solution
of the problem of national self-determination. To erudition he adds a
happy literary skill. He engages the interest of his readers. And while he
affects neither preciosity nor paradox, one turns back occasionally to re-read
a passage or a sentence for the pure pleasure of its epigrammatic felicity.
The book has a fine portrait of Lord Elgin and a good Index.
ANDREW MARSHALL.
THE HISTORY OF THE MONASTERY OF THE HOLY-ROOD AND OF THE
PALACE OF HOLYROOD HOUSE. By John Harrison, C.B.E., LL.D.
Pp. viii, 274, with ten Illustrations. Crown 4to. Edinburgh :
William Blackwood & Sons. London, 1919. 255. net.
THE history of Holyrood has cast as it were a magic spell over many
writers. More than a score of books have been published about it, not to
speak of such full descriptions as that by James Grant in his Old and New
Edinburgh, or slighter ones to be found in many books of reference. They
are of all characters and qualities, from the weird Nocturnal Visit to
142 Harrison : Monastery of the Holy-Rood
Holyrood (rarely to be met with now) published in French by the Comtesse
de Caithness, Duchesse de Pomar, in which she relates an interview with
the shade of Queen Mary, down to the latest guide-book. Not that the
latter are to be despised, as the official guide-book to the Palace is from the
pen of an eminent Scots writer, and is a model of what such books should
be. Just before the war, too, Dr. Moir Bryce, one of the most learned of
local antiquaries, published a delightful little monograph on the place, but
it perhaps appealed more to the collector of dainty editions than to the
serious historical student. And now we have Dr. Harrison's beautiful
volume, written with loving appreciation and diligent care.
When all is said, we do not really know very much about the actual
buildings of Holyrood. A little, no doubt, about the ecclesiastical edifices,
and particularly about the Abbey Church, of which we can actually draw a
plan showing the nave still so far preserved, the now vanished choir
with the little primeval church within it. From the analogy of other
monasteries we know where the cloisters and other adjuncts of the Abbey
must have been, but who could draw out a detailed ground plan of the
whole monastic buildings ? Of the Palace, though later in date, we know
almost as little : almost nothing of the actual buildings erected by James IV.,
though we know that he not only built a lodging worthy of the young
bride he brought home to it in 1503, but also that he furnished it handsomely.
The work of his successor, James V., is still to some extent at least with
us, as we may fairly attribute the present north-west tower to his inception.
He builded well, and his work resisted the flames kindled by Hertford's
soldiery in their invasion of 1544. The alterations made in Queen Mary's
time are nebulous, though there is little doubt that the Palace must have
been much extended to accommodate the large following of the Queen.
But it is not till the last rebuilding of the Palace in the middle of the
seventeenth century that we can trace with certainty the various stages
in the building, and the alterations which were from time to time
made on it.
Dr. Harrison, however, has worked diligently on his subject, and from
the entries in the treasurer's accounts, and those of the master of works,
he has added something to the sum of our knowledge. We know the
cost of the 'eastland buirdis,' the 'oaken geistes,' the stone and iron work,
and the 'glassin werk,' which were provided at several times for the
building or rebuilding of the Palace. And there is a shrewd estimate
given of the situation of two apartments, both now disappeared, the two
Chapels Royal within the Palace, and entirely distinct from the church of
the Abbey itself. One of them was built by James IV. and the other by
his son. The latter is believed to have been the chapel in which Mary
was married to Darnley, while the former became the hall in which
the Privy Council held its meetings.
But if we do not know a great deal about the actual buildings, we have
plenty information about the people who inhabited them. The fascinating
story has been told before, but it loses nothing of its interest and pic-
turesqueness in the glowing pages of Dr. Harrison's book. Few walls,
indeed, have witnessed such thrilling scenes : the splendid entry of the
and the Palace of Holyrood House 143
child bride of James IV. ; the coming of the gentle and fair Madelaine
of France, only to find a grave within its precincts in little more than a
month ; the bright opening of Queen Mary's reign, when the walls
echoed to the strains of Riccio's lute and the roundelays of France ; the
dark doom of the unworthy favourite ; the encounters between the clever
queen and the stern zealot Knox ; and the last scene in the great tragedy
when she was, after a few hours' detention in Holyrood, taken away
from the Palace, which she was never to see again, on the night of the
i6th June, 1567.
The personality of James VI. is well known, but it was too feeble to
make much impression on Holyrood : it is not from his connection with
that house that he will be remembered ; but it is to the credit of his
grandson, Charles II., that he took much interest in the building, and we
owe its present appearance very much to him. Had he let his architect,
Sir William Bruce, have his own way, the result would have been better than
it actually is ; but considerations of cost apparently necessitated economy.
The great event in the history of the Palace in the eighteenth century
was of course the residence in it of Prince Charles Edward, then in the
zenith of his popularity, and the darling of all Scottish Jacobite hearts,
but this is a twice told tale. The occupation of it by the Bourbon
refugees is a more prosaic story, and it is not till Queen Victoria took up
her residence for a time there that it again becomes historically interesting.
With her the author brings his book to a close, though he might have
mentioned the visits of King Edward VII. and our present king, as on
these occasions the old Palace displayed more state than it had seen since
the days of the Stewarts.
We may ask if there is anything more to be found out about Holyrood.
Probably not, though what would happen were our Public Records made
more accessible and indexed as well as they are in England one cannot
say. Even within the walls of Holyrood itself some surprises may yet be
awaiting us. Only the other day an interesting relic was discovered in an
attic in the shape of the funeral hatchment of Mary of Lorraine, containing
her arms done in plaster and wood, and coloured. They were presumably
put above the door of the Palace after her death.
A word about the illustrations. The five views of the present Palace
by Mr. W. D. M'Kay, R.S.A., are charming, and have a grace combined
with accuracy of detail which is beyond praise. The coloured repro-
duction of parts of the view drawn by an officer in Hertford's army (not a
spy, as he has been sometimes called) is from a historical and archaeological
point of view of the utmost value and interest. Its being coloured gives it
a special value, as it shows that Holyrood had a red roof like the houses
in the city itself, while the dwellings in the Canongate were either slated
or thatched — more probably the latter. There are also Gordon of
Rothiemay's views, which are better known, and an excellent view of
Edinburgh and Holyrood in 1670 by Hollar.
Himself an eminent citizen of Edinburgh, Dr. Harrison had laid his
fellow-citizens under an obligation to him by the production of his
excellent work. j BALFOUR PAUL.
144 Hill : The Story of the Scottish Church
THE STORY OF THE SCOTTISH CHURCH FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES.
By Ninian Hill. Pp. xii, 263. Crown 8vo. Glasgow : James
MacLehose & Sons. 1919. 7s. 6d. net.
MANY years have passed since Wakeman wrote his Introduction to the
History of the Church of England^ and even yet no one has emulated his
example and produced a similar book on the history of the Church of
Scotland. Wakeman has set a high standard, but a warm welcome awaits
the Scots historian who will follow him in narrating the story of a sister
Church. Good as is Mr. Ninian Hill's volume, it leaves the gap unfilled.
Its aims are definite and modest, and the author contents himself with
telling in short chapters the main incidents of a tale that begins with
S. Ninian and ends with a pen-picture of a General Assembly of modern
days. To do this well — and Mr. Ninian Hill has done it well — is a
valuable service to all who like to ponder the strange, chequered story of
the Ecclesia Scoticana. It seems ungracious to mention what the author
might have done when he has done so much. We needed a history of
ecclesiastical Scotland in short compass, and now we have it. The late
Principal Macewen left a rich legacy in his large history of our Church
from its earlier days to those of the Reformation, but between his magnum
opus and slender primers there was almost nothing to satisfy the general
reader.
Mr. Ninian Hill's book is in the best sense of the word a war volume.
He is rightly impressed by the tradition of Scotland, a tradition of patriotism
and religion ; and, like Flint, he believes that the Church has done more
than any other institution to make Scotland what it is. It is characteristic
that his monograph is dedicated to a gallant churchman who gloriously
upheld the tradition — Gavin Lang Pagan of S. George's, Edinburgh, and
of the Royal Scots. Mr. Hill, therefore, has written a story that is a sermon.
Accordingly, one has no right to expect many tokens of original
research in what is really a series of pictures of the Scottish Church at
selected periods. Yet there are indications in the Appendix notes that
the author has read widely, and can give illustrations of his reading. His
knowledge of law is often happily used in these notes.
In twelve chapters Mr. Hill completes his task, and ten of these are
occupied with the history of the Church from the foundation of the Candida
Casa till the classic scene of Carstares' courageous patriotism. This dispro-
portionate division of ecclesiastical history leaves only one chapter for a
discussion of events and movements in the Church during the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, and, as these were stormy times, Mr. Hill must
expect considerable criticism of his summaries and interpretations. His is
a robust mind, and he is sturdily loyal to his own Church in its stand
against secession and reproach.
Mr. Ninian's book is not free from mistakes, but these are mostly
minor, and detract but little from the value of the story. There are one
or two expressions that one would like to change, and there are places
where one would like at times more and at times less emphasis. Judged
by the aims Mr. Hill sets before himself his volume is a useful, readable,
and opportune contribution. ARCHIBALD MAIN.
The Makculloch and Gray MSS. 145
PIECES FROM THE MAKCULLOCH AND THE GRAY MSS., TOGETHER WITH
THE CHEPMAN AND MYLLAR PRINTS. Edited by the late George
Stevenson. Pp. xix, 303. With portrait and twelve facsimiles.
8vo. Edinburgh : Scottish Text Society, per William Blackwood
& Sons. 1918.
THE frontispiece portrait must accentuate the regrets of the Scottish Text
Society for the loss of an editor whose record was so brilliant a promise of
service to early national literature. His discoveries, for instance, regarding
the personal career and literary attainments and method of Montgomerie
had made all students of Scottish poetic biography his debtors. Son of
the Town Clerk of Portobello, he graduated at Edinburgh and Oxford,
and in 1908 was appointed lecturer, and in 1913 a professor in English
in the University of Toronto. He died suddenly in 1915 at the age
of 47.
The present book, which expressed his recognition of the immense
literary importance of three poetical collections, two in MS. and the other
in black-letter prints, was not completed when he died, and Mr. Henry
W. Meikle has faithfully seen the work through the press equipped by
him with a short notice of Stevenson's life, an introduction and a modicum
of notes. In this apparatus is adequately outlined the claim for the
collections as sources and authorities for the tradition of Scottish poetry in
and about the period of James IV.
The Makculloch MS. proper consists of lecture notes taken at Louvain
by Magnus Makculloch in 1477, but the poetic addenda were written by a
later, perhaps early-sixteenth-century, hand, on blank leaves and fly sheets.
The pieces include three by Henryson and one by Dunbar. The Gray
MS., written by James Gray, a clerk to successive Archbishops of
St. Andrews, is a miscellany including six vernacular poems, of which four
were transcribed probably before Flodden, while other two from a different
pen were insertions possibly forty or fifty years later. The poems are
of secondary note, and of a religious character. Some correspondence
on the MS. in the Atheneeum in December 1899 might have been referred
to as part of the discussion of date, authorship and literary connexion. It
is a manuscript of central significance not only for the Kingis Ijhiair, but
also as indicative of a probable St. Andrews scriptorium, the bearing of
which on some of our problems will not be clear until the whole Gray MS.
is edited with sufficient facsimiles. The Scottish History Society might
consider such a project.
Third and chief, however, in the sources of this composite publication
under review is the Advocates' Library unique volume, Porteous of Noblenes
and Ten Other Rare Tracts, printed in 1508 by W. Chepman and
A. Myllar, a great credit to the Scottish press, and a monument of the
early editor, whoever he was, who presumably guided the selection of the
poems, and may have otherwise forwarded the enterprise of printing. It
was marrow of Scots poetry that was thus finding its salvation, for the
list included < Golagros and Gawane' by a great alliterative romancer,
'Syr Eglamoure,' of entirely unknown authorship, various minor pieces
of Henryson, and a series of Dunbar's finest performances, including the
146 Hazen : Fifty Years of Europe
* Goldyn Targe ' and the * Lament for the Makaris.' Of Chepman and
Myllar's collected prints only a single example survives, the fine workman-
like and tasteful characteristics of which are well conveyed in the facsimiles.
The service thus rendered to the poetic culture of the Scottish vernacular
at so early a date was beyond calculation, and for critical purposes the
present volume must be of not less utility. The air is full of problems,
and the issues are ripening for solutions in which this triple collection of
texts will be a factor. Incomplete though it be — closed with inevitable
abruptness by a most loyal and competent fellow-worker — the volume, set
firmly on the stocks by George Stevenson, will, as an indispensable
instrument of study, carry forward his name through the century among
those whose labours their countrymen cannot forget.
GEO. NEILSON.
FIFTY YEARS OF EUROPE, 1870-1919. By Charles Downer Hazen,
Professor of History in Columbia University. Pp. viii, 428, with
14 Maps. 8vo. London : G. Bell & Sons. 1919. 145. net.
THE thesis amplified in the numerous volumes which this year has seen
produced, dealing with the history of Europe in the last two generations,
is the same in each case, namely, a description of the growth, maintenance
and decline of German ascendancy. The variations are variations of
treatment. Professor Hazen's aim is not too ambitious. He presents a
summary of the period in narrative form, concerning himself with facts
rather than with theories, and with events rather than with movements of
thought. The result may not be very profound, but it is pleasantly
readable. Certain aspects of the period are treated with a prominence
unusual in a volume of this kind, more notably the attention devoted to
an account of the constitutional system prevailing in even the lesser
countries of Europe and in the British Colonies. The limitations and
inequalities of the German pre-war franchise are specially well described.
A long chapter concerns the internal history of Britain, and another
sketches British colonial development. Like all Americans, Professor
Hazen is too imbued with democratic theories quite to appreciate the
Unionist view of the Home Rule question, or the cross currents which
led to the rejection of the Budget of 1909 by the House of Lords. In
dealing with the General Election of January, 1910, he makes the remark-
able and surely inaccurate statement that * the campaign was one of
extreme bitterness, expressing itself in numerous deeds of violence.'
When Professor Hazen turns to the Colonies he finds himself on surer
ground, except that when he traces the unhappy course of events in South
Africa, he uses the word independence in an apparently absolute sense
as referring to the status of the Transvaal Republic after the Sand River
Convention of 1852, oblivious of the fact that by that Convention the
* suzerainty ' of the British Crown was still maintained. The root of all
future South African difficulties lay in disputes over the content and
implications of that vague term.
The last hundred pages are devoted to a summary of the main events of
the War, up to the date of the Armistice. Though necessarily scrappy, it
Address by M. Raymond Poincare 147
is unbiassed and useful in correcting the perspective of a generation whose
sense of proportion has been impaired by too close contact with epoch-
making events. W. D. ROBIESON.
ADDRESS DELIVERED BY M. RAYMOND POINCARE, Lord Rector of the
University of Glasgow, on November the I3th, 1919. Pp. 14. Folio.
Paris : Imprimerie Nationale. 1919.
FOR nearly five hundred years the University of Glasgow has elected a
Rector, whose post has for long been an honorary one, entailing no greater
labour than the delivery of one address during the three years' tenure of
office. The post, during the last century or more, has usually been held
by a distinguished statesman — in earlier days by ecclesiastics ; and it is
curious that the highest honour which the undergraduates of the University
have in their power to bestow, has rarely been offered to a man on account
of his scholastic or literary or scientific work. The last holder of the
office, however, was probably the only Lord Rector who was the head of
a Great Nation, and M. Poincare's address, which was delivered in
excellent English, was of unusual interest as expressing the feeling of
France towards Great Britain, and especially towards Scotland. The
tributes of praise to Scottish soldiers, sailors and nurses are as generous and
as discriminating as those to Scottish scholars, statesmen and institutions,
although the place and circumstances of the address naturally led the speaker
to adopt a laudatory rather than a critical tone throughout. But what gives
the address its peculiar value is the intimate estimate by the President of
the French Republic of one great Scotsman, the British Commander-in-
Chief, whom M. Poincare singled out as possessing typical national
characteristics. Withdrawing for a moment the veil which usually hides
the proceedings at critical conferences, M. Poincare told the story of his
consultation with Field-Marshal Haig on two occasions, when the fate of
the Western Powers seemed to be hanging in the balance, and when the
Field-Marshal not only showed his clear-sightedness and moral energy,
but acted with 'a patriotism and a loyalty which will make him still
greater in the world's history.' The sincerity of this personal tribute is
unmistakable.
In addition to the print of the Rectorial Address, the French Government
has also issued in their ' Petite Collection Historique ' a series of eleven
charming booklets containing speeches by the President on various public
occasions during the last two years. These cover a wide field, including an
oration in memory of authors who have died during the War, an address
delivered at the Sorbonne, and speeches at Verdun and Nancy.
THE RIGHT TO WORK : An Essay Introductory to the Economic History
of the French Revolution of 1848. By J. A. R. Marriott, M.P.
Crown 8vo. Oxford : Clarendon Press. 1919. is. 6d. net.
MR. MARRIOTT has re-issued his introduction to the edition of Louis
Blanc's Organisation du Travail, and Emile Thomas's Histoire des Ateliers
Nationaux, which was published in 1913, as he considers that a study of
both the economic theories and the practical experiment is valuable to-day.
148 Marriott : The Right to Work
Mr. Marriott describes vividly and concisely the ideas and the events of
the Revolution of 1848. Louis Blanc's work was inspired by the effects
of the industrial revolution in France. His practical proposal was to
use the power of the State to start national workshops, democratically
organised, which should compete with private enterprise so successfully as
to substitute the principle of association for competition, without violence
or confiscation.
His proposals have therefore something in common with both Syndi-
calism and State Socialism. He also preached the doctrine of the right to
work, and it was this idea which attracted the Paris workmen, who were
not satisfied with the political revolution of 1848. Only in this way can
Blanc be considered responsible for the experiment of the national work-
shops which he vehemently disowned, and their failure. The recognition
by the Government of the right to work, and its inability to provide enough
work, led to the payment of thousands of unemployed. Emile Thomas
was appointed Director of National Workshops, and attempted to organise
the masses of working men, but he could not supply work. The
Government's resolve to end the experiment led to the terrible street
fighting of June 23-26, which paved the way for the rise to power of
Louis Napoleon and the end of the Republic. THEODORA KEITH
JUDICIAL SETTLEMENT OF CONTROVERSIES BETWEEN STATES ot THE
AMERICAN UNION — CASES DECIDED IN THE SUPREME COURTS OF THE
UNITED STATES. 2 vols. Collected and edited by James Brown
Scott, LL.D. Pp. xlii, viii, 1775. Large 8vo. New York : Oxford
University Press. 1918. 25s.net.
MR BROWN SCOTT, in carefully bringing together from the many volumes
of American law reports these cases relating to controversies of various
kinds in which the different States have been concerned, has had a practical
object in view. He thinks such cases should be readily accessible, l not
only to the lawyer, but to the layman as well.' Obviously they are of
great importance to every student of American constitutional history.
But at the present day, when a league of nations is contemplated, it is
possible that such decisions may be even of a more wide world value.
* To many,' Mr. Brown Scott says, l it seems that the Court of the
American Union — in which coercive measures are not taken to compel
the appearance of the defendant State, but, in its absence, permission is
given to the plaintiff State to proceed ex parte, and in which hitherto no
judgment against a State has been executed by force, either because it was
felt that no power existed so to do, or its exercise was not considered
necessary — is the prototype of that tribunal which they would like to see
created by the Society of Nations, * accessible to all in the midst of the
independent powers.' '
It is certainly to be hoped that America, which thus sets the example
of such a Society, will not be found to be the stumbling block in the way
of the proposed League of Nations.
We have, perhaps, been too much inclined to look upon America as
one nation, instead of being a society of States, each with its own special
Roughead: The Riddle of the Ruthvens 149
interests, but all subject to an international tribunal. The present
arrangement dates from 1787, when the newly emancipated republic
drafted its constitution, and < devised a Court of the States in which they
consented to be sued for the settlement of the controversies bound to
arise between and among them, denouncing the right of settlement by
diplomacy, and wisely eschewing the resort to force.' Mr. Scott is
sanguine enough to think that what the forty-eight States of the American
Union do, a like number of States forming the Society of Nations can
also do.
The decisions here collected are arranged under different headings, as,
for example, suits by individuals against States and controversies between
different States — often over questions of boundaries. Copies of the
leading documents which form the written constitution of the American
republic are supplied.
For the publication of these volumes we are again indebted to 'the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,' which has already con-
tributed so much to what may be called the constitutional literature of the
United States. W. G. SCOTT MONCRIEFF.
THE RIDDLE OF THE RUTHVENS, and other Stories. By William Roug-
head. Pp. 544, with 13 Illustrations. 8vo. Edinburgh : W. Green
& Sons, Ltd. 1919. 258. net.
THIS volume, of delightful and luxurious form, is full of Scottish story.
It may be described as the happy result of the lucubrations of one of our
lawyers, the most skilled perhaps (teste the late Mr. Andrew Lang) in
placing Scottish yesterdays before us. Generally he does this with historical
subjects, but not always, otherwise we would not have had his admirable
poetic criticism (placed last in this book) on Robert Fergusson, the Edin-
burgh prototype of Burns. Still, it is with historical or legal subjects he is
generally connected, at least in this collection. He begins with ' The
Riddle of the Ruthvens,' an examination of the baffling l Gowrie Con-
spiracy.' We now wonder with him whether the plot was not as much
on the King's side as on that of the victims. .Many 'trials,' judicial or
else so-called, help to fill the book. We get a magnificent view of
legal Nemesis in the remote Highlands when the Pack of the Travelling
Merchant is accounted for through a dream. Witchcraft is dealt with in
three studies. Auld Auchindrayne's Murder of an innocent boy is
narrated, as is the modern case of < Antique Smith ' who * uttered ' forgeries
of the works of the great Dead — some of which may still unhappily be
current. Scottish and Irish Law finds its crux in the curious tangle of the
Yelverton Marriage Case. Two important papers on Lord Braxfield
(whose portrait is twice given to show his different aspects), soften a little
his fierce contours, and one on Lord Grange, who deported his ill-willy-
wife to St. Kilda, are all well worth study. It is impossible to read the
book — which contains many other essays of interest — without delighting
in the writer's thoroughness, his knowledge of Scottish History, his skill
in unfolding the half forgotten past, and his quaint humour.
A. FRANCIS STEUART.
150 Bruton : The Story of Peterloo
THE STORY OF PETERLOO. Written for the Centenary, August 16, 1919.
By F. A. Bruton, M.A. Pp. 45. 8vo. With 7 Illustrations.
London : Longmans, Green & Co. 1919- is. net.
THE * Massacre of Peterloo ' was one of the sad aftermaths of the Napoleonic
War. In 1819 the government of the manufacturing town of Manchester
was still the archaic manorial court — a wholly unrepresentative body
entirely incapable of understanding the aspirations, grievances and desire
of Liberal principles held by the progressive operatives of the city. That
some of the latter held l dangerous ' opinions is admitted ; but the fact
remains that a perfectly peaceful public meeting of ' Reformers,' with the
eloquent ' Orator Hunt ' as chief spokesman, was dispersed in a violent
manner by two bodies of soldiery, who left almost six hundred of the
crowd seriously wounded and many of them, some being women, killed.
Although this was at first regarded with congratulatory equanimity by
Lord Sidmouth, and backed up in an arbitrary manner by the law, the
Liberal principles for which the meeting stood very soon triumphed, and its
sanguinary end was immortalised in Shelley's Mask of Anarchy. This tract
supplies all essential details and authorities in commemorating the event a
hundred years later.
PALMERSTON AND THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION. By Charles Sproxton,
B.A., M.C. Pp. xii, 148. Cr. 8vo. Cambridge : At the University
Press. 1919. 7§. 6d. net.
THE author of this brilliant brochure (one of these young savants whom
we can so ill spare, — fell in the War in 1917) has presented to us an interest-
ing study of Palmerston's diplomacy. Not concealing any of Palmerston's
defects, his undiplomatic and hectoring straightforwardness, his rudeness
to foreign courts, and his blind touching the nerve of their susceptibilities,
he yet shows his love of liberality and justice. He manages in the mazes
of a tortuous and revolutionary epoch to tell us how Palmerston, though
he would not recognise an independent Hungary for fear of weakening
Austria unduly, yet, when the Hungarian cause had, by Russian help, failed
entirely, he, by his influence, saved the Magyar insurgent leaders from
Austrian ferocity.
A HANDBOOK OF GREEK VASE PAINTING. By Mary A. B. Herford,
M.A. Pp. xxii, 125. Royal 8vo. Manchester: At the University
Press. 1919. 9s. 6d. net.
THIS book, which is beautifully illustrated with pictures of vases of the
highest degree of Greek artistic excellence, is written to meet a definite
O O '
want, as until its appearance there has been no work on Greek vase paint-
ing as a whole, although there have been many books and brochures on
Greek ceramics. We congratulate the writer on her historical scholarship,
her knowledge and her skill in collection. The book abounds with
instances of all these qualities on every page, and the shapes and designs of
the Greek vases — so often misnamed ' Etruscan ' — which she has repro-
duced, are a joy to the eye.
M'Lachlan: Methodist Unitarian Movement 151
THE METHODIST UNITARIAN MOVEMENT. By H. M'Lachlan, M.A.
B.D. Pp. xii, 151. Crown 8vo. Manchester: At the University
Press. 1919. 45. 6d. net.
THE history of the movement of 1806-1851 begins with the difference
between Joseph Cook and the rest of his Church on the difficult subject
of 'The Witness of the Spirit' and on 'Justification,' which led to the
formation of the new sect ' The Cookites,' the loci of which were at
Rochdale, Oldham, and a few other centres. The writer styles the
adherents ' humble pioneers of religious and political liberty,' and draws
the materials for his study from the records of their chapels and schools.
FORNVANNEN. MEDDELANDEN FRAN K. VlTTERHETS HlSTORIE OCH ANTI-
KVITETS AKADAMIEN. 1916. Under redaktion av Emil EckhofF.
Wahlstrom & Widstrand, Stockholm.
THIS is an interesting and well-illustrated collection of articles on Old
Lore in Sweden. The papers include observations on the Roman Vessels
in the Upland burial grounds, the gold ornaments of the Bronze Age found
in Sweden, the farm equipments of the Stone Age in Upland ; queries
whether certain stone work is Swedish or Byzantine, and other art owes
its existence to Cologne or Gotland, remarks on Stone-Age axes, etc., and
an article of wider interest by M. Snittger on the old traditions of the
Stork as the ' lifebringer ' in the Northern Counties.
IRELAND THE OUTPOST. By Grenville A. J. Cole, F.R.S. 8vo. Oxford
University Press. 1919.
A SHORT and interesting study founded on the statement in 1436 that
Ireland ' is a boterasse and a poste.' The essayist treats the history of
Irish difficulties from the point of view of a geographer, and so accounts
for the settlements of the different waves of population that have passed
over the country. He points out the gate of Ireland is at Dublin, on the
friendly and * narrow seas.'
CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES : a Book for To-day. By George Gordon
Samson. Pp. iv, 126. Crown 8vo. London : Simpkin, Marshall,
Hamilton, Kent & Co. 1919. 2s. 6d. net.
THE present difficulty that ' Money is not Wealth ' is the keynote of this
booklet, which deals with the problem of cost and labour ; autocracy and
democracy, and such like topics. It is notable that in his short account of
Roman democracy the author does not mention slave ownership or labour.
PAX, THE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THE BENEDICTINES OF CALDEY.
A PLEASANTLY got up brochure which contains an article on Santa Sophia
at Constantinople, one on a Coptic hymn, by Henry Jenner, and what to
us is of greater local interest as Scots ' Some early Religious Memories,' by
Abbot Sir David Oswald Hunter-Blair, O.S.B., now Abbot of Abington,
who writes interestingly about his religious education in Scotland.
152 Current Literature
CATALOGUE OF THE LIBRARY OF THE GLASGOW ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY.
Pp. viii, 140. 410.
THIS handy and well-planned list has been prepared by Mr. Frederic
Kent. It is, as the honorary secretaries of the Society, Mr. A. H.
Charteris and Mr. J. Arthur Brown, recognise, the necessary key to about
1700 books. Their hint that the Catalogue may stimulate donations
deserves success.
An interesting special list of MSS., mainly legal and historical, reaches
us from Norway. It is the Catalogue of Norse Manuscripts in Edinburgh,
Dublin and Manchester, drawn up by Olai Skulerud (Kristiania, 1919.
Pp. viii, 76. 8vo). It is a systematic list, briefly setting forth the contents
of all Scandinavian manuscripts in Trinity College and the Royal Irish
Academy, Dublin, in John Ryland's Library, Manchester, and in the
Advocates' Library and Edinburgh University Library. Attention of
Scottish antiquaries may be drawn to pp. 41, 44-46, and 54-55 for about
a dozen entries, chiefly of minor, but not negligible, note.
In the English Historical Review for October the most considerable
article is Dr. Farrer's second half of his Outline Itinerary of Henry I. It
completes a sustained chapter of first-class British history which will evoke
the gratitude of all who have occasion to work through the obscure
period of the opening twelfth century. Scottish investigators will find a
good many important references to international relations, and particularly
to the movements of David I. at the English Court. Presumably the
Itinerary will ere long be issued in a separate volume. Its mass of detailed
names of persons and places, its incidental notices of events, and its careful
chronological arrangement throughout its solid 155 pages as now printed,
will make it an indispensable adjunct in the study of early feudal English
biography and politics. Other contents this quarter include Carl
Stephenson's discussion of the Aids exacted by the Crown from English
boroughs, largely turning on the problem whether tallagium and auxilium
were not indistinguishable. Malcolm Letts furnishes lively notes of
Frenchmen's travels in sixteenth-century Naples. Edward IV. 's ship,
Grace de Dieu, building in 1446, and 'spoken,' as it were, in the records
of freightage in 1449, nas a note ty R. C. Anderson all to itself, and its
voyages, until broken up in 1486. V. H. Galbraith recovers certain
Articuli laid before Parliament in 1371. Found in a Bury chartulary, they
have a Wicliffite connotation. Mary D. Harris adds to the minor historical
sources from James II. to George II. by introducing the Memoirs of
Edward Hopkins, M.P. for Coventry.
In History for October, Edward Armstrong surveys the Dawn of the
French Renaissance largely under the lights hung out by A. Tilley, who
has made the period his own. Ernest Barker contrasts three concepts of
Nationalism. Alice Gardner, in a striking and persuasive examination of
ecclesiastical policy under Constantine, shows that Dioclesian, having by
instituting the 'adoration' of the Emperor, caused disaffection among
Current Literature 153
the Christians in the army, Constantine, by the altered adoratio of the
standards aimed at restoring the discipline of the soldiery while securing
the supremacy of the emperor and the reverence for the Labarum. The
bearing of this on the interpretation of Constantine's adoption of Chris-
tianity as the State religion, is a subtle and far-reaching political specula-
tion, considerably influenced by the important article of E. C. Babuty
noticed in these columns (S.H.R. xiv, 297) in 1917.
The American Historical Review for July had solid papers on English
ecclesiastical and political problems. A. H. Sweet on the English Bene-
dictines and their bishops in the thirteenth century, deals at large with the
episcopal visitations by which, with difficulty, the moral oversight was
asserted and maintained. W. C. Abbott traces the definite origin of
English political parties under representative government, and their final
transformation over the question of succession to the throne, to the decisive
period of 1675. Edouard Driault, not without an eye on the fates of
1914, re-examines the successive coalitions of Europe by which Napoleon
was put down.
In the same Review for October, fresh and clear new issues are raised
by A. B. White : ' Was there a * Common Council ' before Parliament ? *
His answer is that before Parliament became both in name and reality the
classical body we know, there was no such thing as the Commune Concilium,.
* predecessor of the modern parliament,' as Professor M'Kechnie styles it.
The challenge is not a mere denial ; it is a sort of collation or bibliography
of 258 passages, between the Conquest and the middle of the thirteenth
century, the outcome of which is (i) that, on the instances tabled,,
commune consilium did not pass out of its signification of * general counsel/
and did not become an assembly name in England ; and (2) that concilium
was no transition from consilium, and ' Common Council ' had no prevalence
before ' Parliament.'
Witt Bowden shows how largely English manufacturers opposed the
commercial liberalism of the reciprocity treaty of 1786 with France.
Bernadotte E. Schmitt reconstitutes the Diplomatic Preliminaries of the
Crimea, and blames the Czar for precipitating the conflict from his belief
that Europe would not unite against him. The article makes plain that
Kinglake's elaborate interpretations of the policies and diplomacies of the
war must at many points be qualified and questioned in the new lights
available, which make the attitude even of Stratford de Redcliffe much less
absolute and definite than was long supposed.
Aeronautics have become a most popular new subject of research, and
George E. Hastings has found in the records of the late eighteenth century
much readable and curious matter on ' the Affair of the Baloons,' especially
the designs for their application to war purposes.
The Iowa Journal of History and Politics for July is almost monopolised
by a Historical Survey of Militia in Iowa. The institution itself in
America was inherited from England, and antedates the Revolution. In
Iowa, created a Territory in 1838, the Militia was set up in the same year,.
Cyril B. Upham making himself its historian, traces its annals with large
L
154 Current Literature
masses of local fact, as far down as the close of the civil war, pausing in
1866, when militia law had become almost a dead letter.
The number of the Archivutn Franciscanutn Historicum (xi, 3-4) for
July-October, 1918, contains an account by P. L. Oliger of the treatise of
Fr. Petrus Johannis Olivi (+1298), De renuntiatione Papae Coelestini P.,
some illustrated notes on portraits of Christopher Columbus, by Maurice
Beaufreton, and a German metrical version of the Legend of St Clare^ edited
by Walter Seton. The instalment of the Bullarium of Assisi, and the first
part of an Index regestorum Familiae ultramontanae, which the number
contains, do not offer anything specially Scottish.
The number of the same periodical for January- April, 1919 (xii, 1-2)
contains an account by P. J. Goyens of a school of biblical study founded
at Antwerp in 1768, including an interesting catalogue of books on
Oriental languages then to be found in the convent libraries of that
province. Auguste Pelyer deals with a commentary on Aristotle's Dt
meteorisy which was one of Roger Bacon's sources, and which he attributes
to Alfred of ' Saneshel,' an Englishman, discarding a number of previous
attributions.
P. Th. Plassman devotes forty pages to Bartholomaeus Anglicus, the
author of the popular encyclopaedia, De proprietatibus rtrumy of the middle of
the thirteenth century. He concludes that the author was ' a scion of the
illustrious family of the Glanvilles, who were most likely of Anglo-French
origin, and who were settled in the county of Suffolk.' As a Ia3 he
-entered the Franciscan Order, studied at Oxford and Paris, and afterwards
taught at the convent in the latter city. He is last heard of as a teacher at
Magdeburg. P. Plassman gives an interesting summary of Bartholemeus'
De proprietatibus rerumy and quotes some rather * superior ' references to
.Scotland and Ireland. Of the inhabitants of the former he writes : ' cum
populus sit satis elegantis figure et faciei pulcre tamen eos deformat
•proprius habitus sive Scotica vestitura.'
P. Oliger pursues the inquiry begun by Mr. Seton in the previous
number, and prints a charming Latin version of the Gaudia S. Clarae
/fssissiensis, which he judges to be earlier than the German. Both versions
belong to the period 1350-1380. P. Salvatore Tosti studies Alcuni codici
delle prediche di S. Bernardino da Sienay including some very vivid contem-
porary accounts of the effects of his preaching. Both numbers are full of
interesting material.
D. B. S.
Communications
MACBETH or MACHETH. I venture, for my own instruction,
to propound a problem which is either absurdly simple or insoluble.
Here, so far as I can reconstruct it, is the genealogy of the MacHeth
pretenders who vexed Canmore's line in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
centuries : —
MALCOLM L, King, 942-54.
I I
DUFF, King, 962-7. Reigning line.
KENNETH III., King, 997-1005.
Finlaec. Boedh.
MACBETH, Mormaor (2) = Gruoch = (i) Mormaor of Moray,
of Moray ; |
King, 1040-57. Lulach, d. 1058.
daughter = Heth, Mormaor of Moray.
I
I I
Angus MacHeth, Malcolm MacHeth,
d. 1130. | prisoner 1135.
Donald MacHeth,
prisoner 1156.
Kenneth MacHeth,
d. circ. 1214.
What is MacBeth, Mormaor of Moray, doing in this otherwise
exclusive gallery of MacHeth under-rulers of that province ? I am told
that MacBeth = Son of Life (Vita) — Is MacVittie alternative? What
is the signification of MacHeth ? or are the two names interchangeable ?
But MacBeth, not MacHeth, survives. Is the fact due to MacBeth's
preference in literature ? If so, why do our historians confuse us by
associating both forms ? Or, after all, are the two names, and therefore
the two local dynasties, distinct ?
C. SANFORD TERRY.
L 2
156 An Edinburgh Funeral in 1785
AN EDINBURGH FUNERAL IN 1785. The following account was
found among the papers of the late Mr. Alexander Hutcheson, F.S.A. Scot.
Woodend is in the parish of Madderty near Crieff; but Robert Watt,
who was a writer, died in Edinburgh on the 171)1 of March 1785. As
will be noticed the coffin was 'sheer cloth'd.' According to the New
English Dictionary, a man who removed the superfluous nap from cloth in
a manufactory was called * a shearman ' ; and c sheer ' is descriptive l of
textile fabrics — thin, fine, diaphanous.' j) HAY FLEMING.
ACCOUNT OF THE FUNERALS OF ROBERT WATT OF WOODEND, ESQRE,
TO WILLIAM BUTTER.
1785.
March 2ist. To cash paid for a warrant to break ground in
the Grayfriars Churchyard for a hearse burial £i 5 o
„ the Charity Workhouse - -050
„ the turff - o 10 o
,, the Mortality Recorder - -030
„ the King's duty - 003
„ the gravemen for making the grave - -080
„ the Master Houshold - 050
„ six ushers at 45. -140
„ six batton men - 066
„ four bearers for carrying the corps at is. 6d. 060
„ the use of the best velvet mortcloth with
ribbons and servant - I 6 O
„ drink money to the driver of the hearse,
postillion, and twelve coachmen - -076
„ John Hay per account for a hearse and twelve
coaches in mourning - -4116
„ Husband, Elder and Co. for plumb and seed
cake, wine, &c., as per account - 3 17 4
„ McNab and McDonald as per account for
gloves ---- -0166
„ a suite of fine grave cloaths, with a shroud - 440
„ a large mort coffin covered with black cloth,
and mounted with silver'd plates, handles,
and lacing, with an inscription plate, and
sheer cloth'd and lined with white crape
within - - - - - -880
£28 3 7
COINS IN USE IN SCOTLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY. Among a collection of sixteenth century Orkney docu-
ments recently discovered, there is one that throws some interesting light
on the relative values of Scottish and foreign coins at the period. It is a
charter, dated at St. Andrews (Fife), 8th July, 1556, by which * Maister
Magnus Halcro, chantor of Orknay,' admits the right of Magnus Cragy,
eldest son and heir of the deceased James Cragy, of Burgh in Rolsay
Coins in Scotland in the Sixteenth Century 157
(Rousay), to redeem the six penny land of Burgh, with its pertinents, for
the following sums of money : — 'The sowme of thretty thre roisnoblis or
ellis thre punds and ten schillings for ilk pece thairof, twenty angell noblis
or ellis fourty four schillings for ilk pece thairof, twenty dowble ducats or
ellis thre punds for ilk pece thairof, thre Portugall ducats or ellis fyvetene
pundis for ilk pece thairof, sex Scots rydars of gold or ellis thretty schillings
for ilk pece thairof, fyve licht Frenche crownis or ellis fourtene schillings for
ilk pece thairof, four dymmijs (demys) or ellis twenty twa schillings for ilk
pece thairof, fourscoir Inglis grotts, for ilk pece thairof achtene pennes ; the
priceis of the gold and grottis above expremit to be usual money of Scotland
haiffand courss and passage thairin for the tyme.'
These were the actual sums of money paid to Magnus Cragy by
Mr. Magnus Halcro for the sixpenny land of Burgh, as set forth in the
charter of sale, and the variety of coins indicates the difficulty of finding a
large slump sum of money in Scotland at that time. In addition, the extra
sum of ' elevin scoir twelf punds twa schillings ' had to be paid for the
redemption of the land.
J. STORER CLOUSTON.
KILMARON FAMILY OF FIFE. With reference to the enquiry
of your correspondent, Mr. E. B. Livingston, in S.H.R., xvi, p. 174, I
may be allowed to quote a Tack of the lands of Torer in Fife, granted on
ii November, 1293, by Thomas de Kilmeron in favour of Alexander
' called Schyrmeschur.' The original is in the hands of the Earl of
Lauderdale, and came to light in the litigation of some years ago between
the Earl and the late Captain Scrymgeour-Wedderburn regarding the
right to the Royal Standard-bearership.
The Tack is printed almost in full in the Appendix of Documents which
follows the House of Lords Cases of the Parties, pp. I and 2, as follows : —
Omnibus hoc scriptum visuris vel audituris Thomas de Kylmeron
eternam in domino salutem. Nouerit universitas vestra me assedasse ac
dimisisse Alexandra dicto Schyrmeschur filio Colyni filii Carun totam
terram de le Torrer cum omnibus pertinenciis suis interius et exterius
usque ad terminum nonem annorum continue sequentur plene complen-
dorum pro quadam summa pecunie quam dictus Alexander in mea urgenti
et inevitabili necessitate in pecunia numerata in pre manibus tradidit et
peccavit. de qua quidem pecunie summa teneo ac tenebo me bene
contentum. Tenendam et habendam dictam terram de le Torrer dicto
Alexandra et heredibus suis seu assignatis bene et in pace libere quiete
pacifice et honorifice. in domibus edificiis et ortis. in moris et maresiis.
in pratis et pascuis in viis et semitis et cum omnibus pertinenciis libertatibus
et aysiamentis et commoditatibus cum libero introitu et exitu ad dictam
terram spectantibus seu de iure aliquo spectare valentibus quousque predicti
nonem anni plene et integre fuerint completi et quousque dictus Alexander
et heredes sui seu assignati de anno in annum et de termino in terminum
de dicta terra de le Torrer nonem vesturas sine alicuius condiccione aut
impedimento integre receperint volo et et [sic] concede pro meet heredibus
meis quod liceat dicto Alexandra et heredibus suis seu assignatis habere
158 Kilmaron Family of Fife
liberam potestatem sine aliquo inpedimento ad fodiendas petas in marisco
de le Torrer prout indignerint infra predictos nonem annos et illas petas
ubicunque voluerint vel manserint ad domes suas cariare et abducere.
Termino ingressus dicti Alexandri in die tain terram de le Torrer incipiente
ad festa Sancti Martini in yeme anno domini millesimo ducentesimo nono-
gesimo tercio * * * In cuius rei testimonium sigillum meum una
cum sigillo dicti Patricii de Rankeloch et sigillo decanatus de Fyffet de
Fotherith ad instanciam dictorum Ade de Rankeloch et Willelmi de le
Torrer cissoris fidejussorum meorum et principalium insolidum debitorum
ut predictum est procuratum per eosdem que sigilla propria tempore con-
fectionis scripti presentis non habuerint, hinc scripto est appensum. Hiis
testibus domino Johanne dicto Abbate tune decano Christianitatis de
Fyffe et de Fotherith, Hugone de Lochor tune vicecomitatum de Fyff,
Constantino de Lochor Johanne dicto Gylbuy Michaele dicto Redhode
burgensis de Cupro et multis aliis.
The parchment tag, to which at one time has been appended the seal or
this Document, is a part of an earlier tack by the same Thomas to the
same Alexander.
In an early Inventory of Scrymgeour writs, which was also produced
in the case just mentioned, and has been printed since by the Scottish
Record Society, edited by Dr. Maitland Thomson, occurs on p. 25, the
following entry of apparently the tack now printed : —
(395) * Tak maid be Thomas of Kilmaron to Alexander Scrymgeour,
the sone of Colene, the sone of Carey ne, of the landis of Tor for the space
of nyne zeiris.'
On a later page of the print of the Inventory, p. 41, an entry is ^«
follows : —
(667) * Transumpt of ane charter maid be Richard of Kilmaron to
Alexander the sone of Colene the sone of Carrone, of the landis of
Kilmukir callit Woddislat and Hillokfield, daittit 5 Januar anno lm vcxli.
Johnne Durie, Notar.'
The date here is of course the date of the transumpt.
J. H. STEVENSON.
ALEXANDER CALLED THE SCHYRMESCHUR. The
mention of this personage in the thirteenth century tack quoted above
is interesting in view of the accounts of our historians of the name of the
first Scrymgeour, and the date at which he won his surname. Fordun,
with Bower's continuation, lib. v. cap. xxxvi, p. 285 : Boece, lib. xii, fol.
267 : Buchanan, ed. 1751, p. 265. j. H STEVENSON.
A SCOTTISH PUPIL OF RAMUS. The current number of the
Revue du Seixieme Siecle (v. 209) contains an article by M. Maurice Roy
on UEntrfe de Henri II. a Paris et du sacre de Catherine de Mtdich en
75^0, which deals with the share of the distinguished architect, Philibert
de Lorme, in the preparations for the entry of the new King. In a foot-
A Scottish Pupil of Ramus 159
note M. Roy refers, among other contemporary accounts, to an Oratio
which he, or possibly the printer, assigns to 'Joannes Stevantus,' and
records as having been delivered 'in Collegio Pullenum.' The correct
description of this rare pamphlet is : — De adventu Henrici f^alesii
Christianissimi Francorum Regis in Mctropolim Regni sui Lutitiam
Parisiorum Oratio habita a nobilissimo et generosissimo juvene Joanne
Stevarto Scoto, Nonis Ju/ii? In gymnasia Prelleorum ; Parjsiis, Ex
typographic! Mattheei Davidis^ via amygdalina^ quae est e regione collegii
Rhemensis, ad Veritath insigne, 154.9? Brunet describes it as an ' opuscule
d'une grande rarete,' and my copy contains the following note in the
handwriting of David Laing, to whom it belonged: 'In the only copy
in the B.M. the title ends thus — cum privilegio regis. Mr. Barwick
thought that this copy of mine was probably one struck off to go to
Scotland, where no license would be needed.'
It will be observed that the Oratio was delivered by John Stewart,
a Scotsman, at the College de Presles, on the seventh of July. The royal
entry took place on the sixteenth of June, and the Oratio is an
appreciative narration of the event. The author is stated by Father
Forbes-Leith to have been a native of Glasgow, President of the College
de Montagu, Vice-Rector in 1550 of the Scots College, and Rector of
the University, and to have died in Paris on 6th May, I58I.1 The
external history of the earlier xyears of John Stewart at the University of
Paris can be reconstructed from the Conclusions de la nation c? Allemagne^
Livre des Procureurs (Bibl. Univ. Paris, MSS. Reg. No. 16). He was
admitted bachelor and licentiate in 1535 and 1536 respectively, each entry
containing a note 'cujus bursa valet quatuor solidos parisiensium.' On
igth November, 1537, he was elected 'Procurator of the German nation,'
which included Scotland, for the first time; on ist June, 1541, for the
second time; in October, 1541, for the third time; and on i8th November,
1549, for the fourth time. On I3th January, 1549/50, Stewart demitted
office, handing over 'sigillum dictae nationis cum duobus libris et quatuor
clavibus ' to his successor, but he again held office from April to June of
the year 1551, and from January, 1552/3, to March following. (Ff.
382- 393-, 411™, 452, 542-, 521™, 537™, 538™, 548, 548-°, 553,
and 554™.)
There is a certain irony in the fact that a Scotsman should have
chronicled the royal entry of Henry II. into the capital in which ten years
later he was to meet his death at the hands of the Captain of the Scots
Guard ; but the tract has a greater interest than that of coincidence.
The College de Presles, in which the Oratio was delivered, was under the
direction of Ramus (Pierre de la Ramee), who had been summoned in 1545
by Nicolas Lesage to revive a decaying institution, and succeeded in a few
years in making the college one of the most active centres of intellectual
life in the University. The ruthless attack which Ramus directed against
the Aristotelian dialectic had led to the condemnation in March, 1544,
by royal authority of his A nimadver stones Arhtotelicae and his Dialecticae
1 Pre- Reformation Scholars (Glasgow, 1915), 51. Cf. F. Michel, Les Ecossais en
France, i. 279 n.
160 A Scottish Pupil of Ramus
institutiones, and on his appointment to the College de Presles he avoided
philosophical speculation, and confined his teaching to rhetoric and
mathematics.1 During his persecution at the hands of the scholastics
who had gained the ear of Francis I., Ramus was encouraged by the
faithful support of his colleague, Andomarus Talaeus (Omer Talon),
Professor of Rhetoric, whose writings on dialectic also attracted the
malevolent attentions of the conservative school. In his youth Ramus had
received encouragement from Tusanus (Jacques Tousan), Royal Reader in
Greek, who supported him until his death in 1547. In the same year, on
the accession of Henry II., the restrictions under which Ramus had
laboured for three years were removed by the King through the influence
of the future Cardinal de Lorraine, an old friend and fellow-student. In
1548 he republished his two condemned treatises, his publisher being
Mathieu David.2 David also produced the kindred treatises of Omer
Talon.3
Turning to Stewart's Oratio, we find that it is published by David, and
that the dedication to Henry II. refers in laudatory terms to Ramus and
Talaeus * praeceptoribus meis.' In the body of the tract the author refers
with regret to the recent deaths (1547) of Jacobus Tusanus and Franciscus
Vatablus. The former (Jacques Tousan) had been the protector and life-
long friend of Ramus, and the latter, a learned Professor of Hebrew, had
been a pupil of Aleander, and was in sympathy with the new school.4
There is also a discreet reference to LeTevre d'Etaples, which, with the
other reference, is sufficient to indicate the intellectual sympathies of
Stewart. His Oratio, further, on examination, yields some echoes of the
Oratio de studiis Philosophiae et eloquentlae conjungendis which Ramus
delivered in 1546 and published in 1547, and again, with a Dedication
to the Cardinal de Lorraine, in I549.5 In the same year another Stewart,
James, the future Regent Moray, became a pensionnaire of Ramus, and
it is probable that other Scottish students came under his influence. He
was a friend of George Buchanan and of Andrew Melville, who * heard'
him 'in Philosophic and eloquence,' and whose biographer places him
among 'the lightes of the maist scyning age in all guid lettres.'6 When
Melville came to Glasgow College in 1574 he taught his pupils 'the
Dialectic of Ramus, the Rhetoric of Taleus, with the practise thairof in
Greik and Latin authors,' and ' the Arithmetic and Geometric of Ramus,'
and his nephew James, when he became regent at Glasgow in his
nineteenth year in 1575, 'teatched . . . the Dialectic of Ramus, the
1 Christie, Etlenne Dolet (London, 1899), 437 n., but cf. Waddington, l^amus,
P- 57-
2 Waddington, Ramus (Paris, 1855), passim.
3 Ibid, and Catalogue of Christie Collection (Manchester, 1915), J.P.
4 Renaudet, Prereforme et humanisme (Paris, 1916), 613. He helped Marot with
his translation of the Psalms. Waddington, op. clt. 128.
5 Parisiis, Apd Martlnum Juvenem, sub Insignl D. Christophori, e reglone gymnasii
Cambracenslum.
c James Melville's Diary, 39.
University of Nancy 161
Rhetorik of Taleus, with the practise in Cicero's Catilinars and
Paradoxes, &C.'1 Ramism had an important place in the Melville system
of education, and, for a time at least, prevailed in Scotland.2
The intrinsic interest of Stewart's account of the royal progress is
slight, and even a Scottish reader may be pardoned if he prefers Brantome's
'digression' on the ' tres belles singularites ' which marked Henry's entry
into Lyons in the preceding year. Even a Latin veil cannot conceal the
grotesque quality of a civic-academic-legal-clerical procession, but a pleasant
note is sounded in the description of the King's passage, < viginti quatuor
Scotis custodibus undique stipatus.' The value of the Oratio lies in the
light which it casts on the influence of French humanism on a typical
Scottish student, and on the forces which went to the making of sixteenth
century Scotland. DAVID BAIRD SMITH.
UNIVERSITY OF NANCY. A few weeks before war was declared
in 1914 the Franco-Scottish Society met at Nancy. On the 3151 October,
1918, the University Library there was destroyed by bombardment. How
great was the destruction is seen by some photographs which the University
has prepared, showing the scattered leaves of print and MS. lying in heaps
among the ruins. It is gratifying to know that a few sympathisers in
Scotland have, thanks mainly to the energy and influence of Mr. J. T. T.
Brown, LL.D., collected and presented to the University of Nancy a very
considerable collection of works on Scottish history. The gift was
formally accepted on behalf of the authorities of Nancy University by
M. Poincare on the occasion of his recent visit to the University of
Glasgow.
SEIGNEUR DA VIE. The Italian, David Riccio, or Rizzio, was
murdered by the irate Scottish Lords at Holyrood on the night of
March 9, 1566, and thus gave to Scotland an Italian tragedy to be
followed by the equally tragic fates in France of the Italian favourites,
the Concini and Monaldeschi. But what do we know to-day of David
Rizzio, his origin, aims, and position ? It is strange, but true, that though
for a brief period he exercised a high political position in Scotland, we have
hardly any authentic information about him. We only know that he was
the son of a musician of Pancalieri, in Piedmont, and as he was attracted to
the Embassy of the Marchese di Moretta, the Savoy Ambassador to
Scotland, was probably of noble origin. Moreri, on this head indeed,
says : —
1 Una famiglia Ricci e computata fra le antiche nobile Piedmontesi e
gode de' feudi di S. Paolo, e Cellarengo nell' Astigiana. Esisteva par anche
un altro ramo degli stessi Ricci Signori di Solbrito, i sogetti del quale
llbid. 49, 53 ; cf. Waddington, op. cit. 396, and Murray, Lawyers' Merriments
(Glasgow, 1912), p. 234.
2 Rait, « University Education in Scotland ' : Glasgow Archaeological Society
Transactions, v. (2) 30, and ' Andrew Melville and Aristotle in Scotland ' :
English Historical Review, xiv. 250.
1 62 Seigneur Davie
dicesi, che usasero sovente del nome di Davide, e da questo e tradizione
antica in Astigiana, che sia discesso Davide Ricci, ma in linea spuria. Gli
oltremontani lo chiamano David Riz. e Rizio.'
He came to Scotland with the Savoy Ambassador, and, having a good
voice, it is said, insinuated himself into the choir that the Oueen might
hear and notice him, and the ruse succeeded. She did notice him, and as
(as Birrel says) he was ' verey skilfull in music and poetry,' he soon made
a conquest of the artistic Queen, who advanced him to be her French
Secretary, and heaped favours on him. As such he assisted in helping on
her marriage with her worthless cousin, Henry Lord Darnley ; some said
in the pay of the Pope, and others as a priest, others, as the nobles thought,
as an intriguing Italian busybody. But now we come to a difficulty.
It is stated that one of the Queen's Guise uncles recommended Rizzio
to the Queen for her familiar, as his deformity would shield her
from scandal. As the sequel shows, this was not so, and we have no
certainty that the Italian was a hunchback. One later writer certainly
says he was cdisgracie de corps/ but Lord Herries, who knew him, simply
calls him ' neither handsome nor well faced,' and, of course, the Reformers
saw no beauty in him either body or soul.
All through his short career are difficulties left uncleared. Queen Mary
wished to give him Lord Ross's estate Melville (where Rizzio's oak is,
from near which he is said to have serenaded the Queen) on the North
Esk, and attempts at compensation embroiled Lord Morton, who saw his
Court appointments threatened. The King-Consort grew jealous — it
seems without cause — and a conspiracy followed.
Even the favourite's behaviour was the subject of misapprehension. At
the tragic supper party he was surprised, seated in the Queen's presence
with his cap on his head, which the Scots took to be Italian insolence, but
which the courtiers knew to be a la mode de France.
Then came the terrible scene of the murder ; as the ballad describes it —
Some Lords in Scotland waxed wondrous wroth,
And quarrilled with him for the nonce ;
I shall you tell how itt befell
Twelve daggers were in him all att once.
and he was despatched and thrown downstairs, and laid to rest on the chest
which had been his bed when he arrived at the Palace before his elevation.
Another dubiety exists about his burial. The Spanish State papers
stated — 'Secretary David was buried in the Cemetery, but the Queen had
him disinterred and placed in a fair tomb inside the Church [of Holyrood],
whereat many are offended, and particularly that she has given the office of
Secretary to David's brother.' Popular discontent about his burial grew,
and the tradition is that his body was removed and laid in the Canongate
Church ; but this is, as far as can be traced, mere tradition.
One wishes some reader would write a monograph on Rizzio. It is
much wanted. Several portraits which are called by his name exist, and
his handwriting must exist also, but has not yet been reproduced. His
brother Joseph, by the Queen's favour, succeeded him, as we have seen,
The Mint at Crosraguel Abbey 163
as French Secretary, but, being involved in the Darnley murder, wisely
remained in France. A Frenchman who is named 'frere dudict Joseph,'
perhaps brother-in-law of the last, bore the name Rene Bonneau,1 and this
may be a clue to some future searcher. It would be a great addition to
historical knowledge to roll back all the mists that surround this dark period
of Scottish history. A FRANCIS STEUART
THE MINT OF CROSRAGUEL ABBEY. Dr. George
Macdonald has recently presented to the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland a very valuable report on the coins found at Crosraguel in the
spring of 1919, and he has also contributed a paper on the subject to the
Scotsman of 27th December, of which an abridgment is noted here.
The ruins of the Abbey of Crosraguel lie in a hollow about two miles
south of the town of Maybole in Ayrshire. During the past five years
operations necessary to prevent further decay have been in progress. A
minor feature of these was the clearing out of a choked-up drain which
ran in an easterly direction on the south of the cellars. Originally it had
been the bed of a small stream, whose current had been utilised to flush
the latrines. In removing the rubbish the workmen lighted upon a few
fragments of glass and a large number of objects of metal, including many
coins. The bulk of the finds were embedded at irregular intervals in the
twelve inches of silt composing the lowest stratum of the 44 feet °f debris
with which the drain was filled.
The larger proportion of the finds evidently had been jettisoned
simultaneously, and of deliberate purpose. The coins numbered 197
in all, 2O being of the base alloy of silver known as billon, 156 of
bronze or copper, and 21 of brass. The billon pieces are much
discoloured. But those of copper and of brass, though sometimes pre-
senting a wholly or partially blackened surface, are frequently not far
from being as fresh and bright as if they had been recently minted. The
striking is almost invariably bad. It proved possible to distinguish five
separate classes, some of them containing several different varieties. One
of these classes is entirely unknown elsewhere, while another has hitherto
been regarded as native to the Continent. The weights are anything but
uniform, even when the types are identical, and the shapes are in many
instances irregular, sometimes approximating to the square. The coins,
we seem bound to conclude, were minted close to the spot where they
were found. That opinion is confirmed by the presence in the omnium
gatherum of one or two copper blanks that have never been struck. It is
further borne out by the character of the remaining oddments of metal, of
which there are as many as 385, chiefly of brass. They give the impression
of being raw material out of which blanks were intended to be fashioned.
In short, coins and oddments combined go to form a medley which cannot
be explained satisfactorily except on the hypothesis that we are face to face
with the sweepings of a moneyer's workshop which had to be hurriedly
abandoned.
1Teulet, Papiers (TEtat, 1566-67, ii. 125.
164 The Mint at Crosraguel Abbey
The Crosraguel coins can be dated with certainty to the latter part of
the fifteenth century. That was one of the great periods in the history
of the establishment. Abbot Colin, who was head of the community from
1460 to 1491, enjoyed the special favour of James III., and was a regular
attender at his Parliaments. It is not unlikely that, in view of the
remoteness of the district from the centre of administration, the King
may have allowed his friend the Abbot to minister to the needs of the
numerous dependants of the monastery by supplying them with a special
currency. No serious abridgment of the royal prerogative would be
involved, so long as the concession was strictly limited (as it appears to
have been) to the issue of small change. That, however, is mere
conjecture.
While the facts as to the inauguration of the Mint of Crosraguel Abbey
are obscure, there can be little doubt as to the manner of its end.
Presumably its suppression was one of the steps that James IV. took to
ensure that his authority should be respected throughout the length and
breadth of the land. His activity in that direction is notorious. The
annals of the coinage of France present us with more than one picture of
what we may suppose to have happened. At Macon, for example, in 1557,
and again at Autun twenty years later, the officials of the Cour des
Monnaies made a sudden descent on the premises of the chapter, and
seized the dies and other implements that were employed for the
production of the tokens used in connection with ecclesiastical ceremonies.
The monks had infringed the jealously guarded privilege of the king by
allowing the tokens to be diverted from their proper purpose, and to pass
current among the townsfolk as ordinary coins. The pretext for the raid
upon Crosraguel would be somewhat different. Its upshot was very much
the same. The dies and everything of value would be carried off, while
the rubbish was thrown hurriedly into the latrine trench. It was an
ignominious close for an institution that seems to have been unique in
Britain. Yet, if the rubbish had received more honourable burial, even
the zeal of the Office of Works might have failed to unearth it. In that
event we should have been left in ignorance of a singularly interesting
episode. As it is, the long-standing puzzle of the Crux pellit pieces has
been definitely solved, and a new footnote has been added to Scottish
monastic history.
The
Scottish Historical Review
VOL. XVIL, No. 67 APRIL, 1920
The Spanish Story of the Armada 1
I HAVE twice been led to discourse on Spain in this, my
native town ; and once it was my own choice : the Philo-
sophical Society left it to me to find a text anywhere in the
wide world, and 1 chose Don Quixote. It may have been the
success of that lecture that brought about an invitation from
the School of Art to come and address the students there on
Spain and the Renaissance. I did not find in myself any particular
qualification for the task, but it was an adventure, and I look
back on it with pleasure, and with perpetual gratitude to the
small and very honourable company who helped me through,
with their cheerful countenance, on one of the ugliest winter
afternoons I can remember in Renfrew Street.
Now again I am challenged to come out and speak about Spain,
and I find it no easier than it was the last time, and harder to
get the right ground to start from. I have not been altogether
idle lately, and there are many things I have learned, and more
that I hope to find out, in the inexhaustible literature of Spain.
But, though it is nearly fifty years since I first read a play of Lope
(it was El Acero de Madrid in a volume borrowed from the
College Library), I have not yet read enough even to make a
traveller's story out of it — I mean such a story as one brings
back from a summer holiday in new countries and landscapes.
Reading Lope de Vega is very like such a holiday, but it is
1 A paper read to the Spanish Society of Scotland in Glasgow, December 1 7,
1919.
S.H.R. VOL. XVII. M
i66 W. P. Ker
difficult to say what it all amounts to, when the music has to stop
—the melody of the quintillas and redondillasy that never fails,
whatever the story or the scene may be : how is one to describe it ?
I thought again of the poem of the Cid — El Cantar de Myo Cid
—and in that there was something more easily comprehensible,
easier to describe, than the manifold changing pageant of Lope
de Vega and his companions in the great age of the Castilian
drama. One might compare the poem of the Cid with the
Song of Roland ; there is enough in that for one sermon, and
the themes are such that, without going very deep, it is possible
to arrive at a sane and sensible opinion regarding these two
wonderful old heroic poems. But, for one reason or another,
I refused to take up the old epic of Castile.
There was another part of Spanish history, namely the Armada,
which seemed to me to bring out, through all the deadly conflict
of England and Spain, an agreement or likeness in taste and
temper between England and Spain, while I remembered the
passage in the Memoirs of the Rev. James Melvill, which gives
Scotland a share in the story, and introduces, on the coast of Fife,
personages whose lives and adventures are illustrated in the
Spanish State Papers on the Armada, in the Spanish story of the
Armada published in 1884 by Captain Cesareo Fernandez Duro.
The Spanish story of the Armada — Froude had told it in his
own way, but there were many things which Froude had passed
over in his selection of points of interest ; Froude did not quote
James Melvill, and did not show how Fernandez Duro's docu-
ments supplemented the Scottish narrative.
James Melvill, minister of Anstruther- Wester in 1586, also
of Kilrenny, Abercromby, and Pittenweem, had gone to Glasgow
in 1574 with his uncle Andrew, the Principal, and there taught
as Regent.
' 1576, the second yeir of my regenting, I teatchit the elements
of Arithmetic and Geometric out Psellus for schortnes : the
Offices of Cicero ; Aristotles Logic, in Greik, and Ethic (and
was the first regent that ever did that in Scotland) also Platoes
Phaedon and Axiochus; and that profession of the Mathematiks,
Logic and Morall Philosophic, I keipit (as everie ane of the
regents keipit thair awin, the schollars ay ascending and passing
throw) sa lang as I regented ther, even till I was, with Mr. Andro,
transported to St. Andros.'
Mr. James Melvill tells a story of College life in Glasgow
in those days, one of the vivid, true things that keep the body
The Spanish Story of the Armada 167
of the bygone time. This digression may be allowed. One
summer evening, as he was coming home from his fencing lesson
in the Castle (a gentleman detained for manslaughter was his
instructor), Mr. James Melvill was attacked by a student, Alex-
ander Boyd, whom he had corrected for absenting himself from
the Kirk and playing the loon on the Sabbath day. Along with the
loon was an older friend of his, Alexander Cunningham, armed
with sword and whingar. Mr. James closed with Cunningham :
* I gripped his sword arm under my left oxter, and with my
right hand caucht his quhingar, haiffing na kynd of wapean upon
myselff, and bids him stand.'
There was a mighty noise about this ; all the Boyds came to
town to bully the College. But the Principal was firm, and the
loon broke down, and the dispute ended in laughter. The loon,
Mark Alexander Boyd, was afterwards a scholar and poet of
repute ; you will find him in the Oxford Book of English Verse,
and in Mr. Bowyer Nichols's English Sonnets.
And here is James Melvill's story of the Spanish Armada.
MDLXXXVIII. 'That wintar the King was occupied in com-
menting of the Apocalypse, and in setting out of sermontes
thairupon against the Papists and Spainyartes. And yit, by a
piece of grait owersight, the Papists practeised never mair bisselie
in this land, and maid graitter preparation for receaving of the
Spainyartes, nor that yeir. For a lang tyme the newes of a
Spanishe navie and armie haid bein blasit abrode ; and about
the Lambes tyde of the 1588, this Yland haid fund a feirful
effect thairof, to the utter subversion bathe of Kirk and Polecie,
gifFGod haid nought wounderfullie watched ower the sam, and
mightilie fauchten and defeat that armie be his souldiours, the
elements, quhilk he maid all four maist fercelie to afflict tham
till almost utter consumption. Terrible was the feir, persing
war the pretchings. ernest, zealus, and fervent war the prayers,
sounding war the siches and sobbes, and abounding was the
teares at that Fast and General Assemblie keipit at Edinbruche,
when the newes war credibly tauld, sumtymes of thair landing
at Dunbar, sumtymes at St. Androis, and in Tay, and now and
then at Aberdein and Cromartie first.1 And in very deid, as we
knew certeanlie soone efter, the Lord of Armies, wha ryddes
upon the winges of the winds, the Keipar of his awin Israeli, was
in the mean tyme convoying that monstruus navie about our
costes, and directing thair hulkes and galiates to the ylands,
1 Sic, meaning Cromarty Firth.
1 68 W. P. Ker
rokkes, and sandcs, whareupon he haid destinat thair wrak and
destruction. For within twa or three monethe thairefter, earlie
in the morning, be brak of day, ane of our bailyies cam to my
bedsyde, saying (but nocht with fray), * I haiff to tell yow newes,
Sir. Ther is arryvit within our herbrie this morning a schipefull
of Spainyartes, bot nocht to giff mercie bot to ask ! ' And
sa schawes me that the Commanders haid landit, and he haid
commandit tham to thair schipe againe till the Magistrates of
the town haid advysit, and the Spainyartes had humblie obeyit :
£herfor desyrit me to ryse and heir thair petition with tham.
Upe I got with diligence, and assembling the honest men of the
town, cam to the Tolbuthe ; and efter consultation taken to heir
tham and what answer to mak, ther presentes us a verie reverend
man of big stature, and grave and stout countenance, grey-heared
and verie humble lyk, wha, after mikle and verie law courtesie,
bowing down with his face neir the ground, and twitching my
scho with his hand, began his harang in the Spanise toung,
wharof I understud the substance ; and being about to answer
in Latine he, haiffing onlie a young man with him to be his
interpreter, began and tauld ower againe to us in guid Einglis.
The sum was, that King Philipe his maister haid riget out a
navie and armie to land in Eingland, for just causes to be
advengit of manie intolerable wrangs quhilk he had receavit of
that nation ; but God for thair sinnes haid bein against thame
and be storme of wather haid dryven the navie by the cost of
Eingland, and him with a certean of capteanes, being the Generall
of twentie hulks, upon an yll of Scotland, called the Fear Yll,
wher they maid schipewrak, and whar sa monie as haid eschapit
the merciles sies and rokes, haid mair nor sax or sevin ouks
suffered grait hunger and cauld, till conducing that bark out of
Orkney, they war com hither as to thair special frinds and con-
federats to kiss the King's Majestie's hands of Scotland (and thair-
with bekkit even to the y card), and to find releiff and comfort thairby
to him selff, these gentilmen Capteanes, and the poore souldarts,
whase condition was for the present most miserable and pitifull.
' I answerit this mikle, in soum : That whowbeit nather our
frindschipe quhilk could nocht be grait, seing thair King and
they war frinds to the graitest enemie of Chryst, the Pope of
Rome, and our King and we defyed him, nor yit thair cause
against our nibours and speciall frinds of Eingland could procure
anie benefit at our hands for thair releifF and confort ; never-
theless, they sould knaw be experience that we war men, and sa
The Spanish Story of the Armada 169
moved be human compassione and Christiannes of better relligion
nor they, quhilk sould kythe, in the fruicts and effect, plan
contrar to thars. For wheras our peiple resorting amangs tham
in peacable and lawfull effeares of merchandise, war violentlie
takin and cast in prisone, thair guids and gear confiscat, and thair
bodies committed to the crewall flaming fyre for the cause of
Relligion, they sould find na thing amangs us bot Christian pitie
and warks of mercie and almes, leaving to God to work in thair
hearts concerning Relligion as it pleased him. This being trewlie
reported again to him be his trunshman, with grait reverence
he gaiff thankes, and said he could nocht make answer for thair
Kirk and the lawes and ordour thairof, only for him selfF, that
ther war divers Scotsmen wha knew him, and to whome he haid
schouin courtesie and favour at Calles (I.e. Cadiz), and as he
supposit, some of this sam town of Anstruther. Sa schew him
that the Bailyies granted him licence with the Capteanes to go
to thair ludging for thair refreshment, bot to nane of thair men
to land, till the ower-lord of the town war advertised, and under-
stand the King's Majestie's mynd anent thame. Thus with grait
courtessie he departed. That night, the Lard being advertised,
cam, and on the morn, accompanied with a guid nomber of the
gentilmen of the countrey round about, gaiff the said Generall
and the Capteanes presence, and after the sam speitches, in effect,
as befor, receavit tham in his hous, and interteined tham humeanly,
and sufferit the souldiours to com a-land, and ly all togidder,
to the number of threttin score, for the maist part young berdles
men, sillie, trauchled, and houngered, to the quhilk a day or twa,
keall, pattage, and fische was giffen ; for my advyse was conforme
to the Prophet Elizeus his to the King of Israel, in Samaria,
' Giff tham bread and water,' etc. The names of the commanders
war Jan Gomes de Medina, Generall of twentie houlkes ; Capitan
Patricio, Capitan de Legoretto,1 Capitan de LufFera, Capitan
Mauritio, and Seingour Serrano.
< But verelie all the whyll my hart melted within me for desyre
of thankfulnes to God, when I rememberit the prydfull and crewall
naturall of they peiple, and whow they wald haiffusit us in ceas they
haid landit with thair forces amangs us ; and saw the wounderfull
wark of God's mercie and justice in making us sie tham, the
cheiff commanders of tham to mak sic dewgard and curtessie
to pure simen, and thair souldarts sa abjectlie to beg almes at
our dures and in our streites.
1 Esteban de Lagorreta, in the Capitanade las Ureas, Fernandez Duro, ii. 39.
1 7o W. P. Ker
* In the mean tyme, they knew nocht of the wrak of the rest,
but supposed that the rest of the armie was saifflie returned, till
a day I gat in St. Androis in print the wrak of the Galliates in
particular, with the names of the principall men, and whow they
war usit in Yrland and our Hilands, in Walles, and uther partes
of Eingland ; the quhilk when I recordit to Jan Gomes, be
particular and speciall names, O then he cryed out for greiff,
bursted and grat. This Jan Gomes schew grait kyndnes to a
schipe of our town, quhilk he fund arrested at Calles at his
ham-coming, red to court for hir, and maid grait rus of Scotland
to his King, tuk the honest men to his hous, and inquyrit for
the Lard of Anstruther, for the Minister, and his host, and send
hame manie commendationes. Bot we thanked God with our
hartes, that we haid sein tham amangs us in that forme.
[Autobiography and Diary of Mr. James Mehill, ed. Robert
Pitcairn, Wodrow Society, 1842, pp. 260-264.]
Now among the papers published by Fernandez Duro is a
narrative of the whole expedition, anonymous, which is plainly
the story of Juan Gomez de Medina.1 The Spanish historians
have not read James Melvill ; the English historians, Froude
and Sir John Laughton, leave him unmentioned, and thus Juan
Gomez de Medina, also, has received less than his due. Here is
a small contribution of my own to the history of the Armada,
produced by ' combining his information.' The earlier part of
the story, in the narrative of Juan Gomez, I will not repeat, as
it is not my purpose to go over again the main history of the
great sea battle. But there are points worth noting : as when
he speaks of the English fleet coming out of Plymouth on the
morning of the ist of Angust :
'venia en ella el Capitan general: dicen se llamaba Invierno.'
This is Spanish for Sir William Wynter.
And he has a note on the loss of the great man of war, Nuestra
Seftora del Rosario (1,150 tons), and the surrender of Don Pedro
de Valdes. To us, at this distance of time, the meeting of Don
Pedro de Valdes, a shipwrecked sailor, with Sir Francis Drake,
and the dignified and considerate treatment of the prisoner, makes
a picture of honourable war in the spirit of Velasquez his sur-
render of Breda, where the victor Spinola and the surrendered
Justus van Nassau have part in the same world of true honour.
Juan Gomez at the time recognises this, and salutes the enemy :
1 Op. cit. ii. pp. 279-293.
The Spanish Story of the Armada 171
' The ship was taken by the enemy that night, so we heard,
and was more mercifully treated by them than by us ; D. Pedro
was sent to London to the Queen, and the rest of the prisoners
distributed all through the Island, it was reported.'
The same generous spirit shines through here as was to be
shown by Juan Gomez, not long after he put the finishing words
to his paper, writing with too much time to spare in the Fair
Isle.
The abandonment of D. Pedro de Valdes was felt as a disgrace
all through the Spanish fleet, and the shame is deepened through
contrast with the generosity of the English. The abandonment
of Pedro de Valdes and the explosion of the San Salvador were
the beginning of ruin ; bad omens :
4 Estas dos desgradas fueron el annuncio de nuestra perdition.
Sucedio esto dentro de dos horas, que fue harto pesar d toda la
Armada por el mal agiiero.
What was obvious to everyone in the great action is not left
unnoted by Juan Gomez ; the great skill and daring of the
English navy ; their superiority in sailing, and their consistent
policy never to close, and always to keep the weather gauge —
teniendo siempre gran cuidado de tenernos ganado el barlovento.
I take two entries in the Journal :
' 9th August. Nothing fresh ; the two fleets continuing to
sail in sight of one another, the enemy keeping
to windward.'
' loth „ We sailed on, with no certain knowledge of
our destination, and always the enemy fleet in
sight, keeping us to leeward.'
On the 1 3th, the writer tells of the Duke's order to throw
horses and mules overboard ; there was no water on board to
spare for them.
* On the 1 4th, we saw many horses and mules swimming past :
they kept on throwing them overboard, and it was pitiful to see,
because they all made for the ships, looking for help. This was
the first day that we had no sight of the enemy fleet.'
On the i yth, there was a gale and thick weather.
On the 1 8th, they lost sight of the Spanish fleet and the
Duke's ship. Only three ships were in sight, the Venedana
and two hulks (ureas), besides the urea (Capitana] in which the
writer was.
On the 3 1 st of August, one of the hulks gave in, and called
for help ; the pumps had got choked with ballast ; the men were
i72 W. P. Ker
taken off, but the weather was too bad to allow of any stores
being taken.
From the i8th of August to the 2nd of September, they were
tacking to weather Clare Island, ' but it pleased God not to
allow us.'
On the 2nd, they lost sight of the other two vessels, and went on
beating up for the Cape : the wind was all the time against them.
On the 1 7th, in a storm, their hulk sprang a leak, and they
had to run before the wind for Norway, i8th to 2oth September.
Then the wind turned fair, lat. 57° 30' N., in sight of Scottish
islands, and they took their old course again, with hope to see
1 our dear Spain,' more particularly as it was new moon.
2ist to 23rd September: the leak getting worse, and the
wind and sea too strong. Then, in a lull, they were able to stop
the leak with hides and planks, so that one pump was enough
to keep them fairly dry.
On the 24th, head wind : they turned for Scotland.
26th, got among islands, and had great trouble at night,
in rough weather, finding islands ahead of them — ' trouble which
will be understood sufficiently by those who have seen the like.'
At last, late on the 2yth, at sunset, they made the Fair Isle :
*We found 17 households (vecinos) living there in huts;
wild people (gente sahaje) ; their food is mostly fish, without
bread, except it be a little of barley, baked in cakes : their fires
are fed with such fuel as they have in the island, which they
simply take out of the earth ; they call it turba. They have
cattle of a sort, enough for them ; they seldom eat meat : cows,
sheep, swine : the cows are the most profitable (milk and butter) :
they use the sheep's wool for their clothes. They are not a clean
people ; neither Christians, nor yet utter heretics. They say
they do not like the preachers who come to them yearly from
another island near (lo que les vienen a pedricar cada afto] ; but
they say that they cannot do anything : it is a pity.
* We landed 300 men in the island, with no provision. From
the 28th of September, Michaelmas Eve, to the I4th of November,
50 have died, the most part of hunger — que es la mayor Idstima
del mundo. We determined to send messengers to the neigh-
bouring island, to ask for boats to convey us to Scotland, where
we might find a passage, or other help. But from the 28th of
September to the Eve of St. Simon and St. Jude, the 27th of
October, there was no possible chance : the weather was too bad.
On that day, the weather was fair (un tiempo afable)y and they
The Spanish Story of the Armada 173
were able to go. They have not yet returned, for the violence
of the sea (por la braveza de la mar).'
There the story breaks off, November i4th. James Melvill
tells the rest. Many stories of the Spanish fleet have a less
happy ending.
The interest of all this is what our own poet, John Barbour,
explained at the beginning of his Bruce — it is all a good story,
and it is true. The advantage of true stories is that they compel
you to make them yourself : you do not get the good of it unless
you do a little work. Here one part of the story is in the
Minister's Diary, another part in Spanish archives and the
published work of the Spanish naval historian. You bring the
two together, and suddenly you find that you are looking at
the real life of the past, you are admitted to see the working
of Fate or Chance or Providence through the weary wash of the
Northern seas — bringing about, at some expense, the meeting
of those two very estimable gentlemen, James Melvill and Juan
Gomez, and something of generous life and good feeling to put
on the other side of the account, against the merciless treatment
of the shipwrecked Spanish on other coasts, by Sir Richard
Bingham, Governor of Connaught, and Sir William Fitzwilliam,
the Deputy in Ireland.1
Of all the stories of the Armada, there is none to beat Captain
Francisco de Cudlar's adventure in Ireland, as narrated by
himself in a letter to an unnamed correspondent. Cuellar's
letter is freely used by Froude, but Froude leaves out many
things, and much of the spirit is lost. The truth is that * none but
itself can be its parallel ' ; it cannot be paraphrased or diluted, and
the much praised literary art of the English historian does no more
than make neat English sentences through which the irrepressible
high spirits of the man himself are not revealed as they are in the
original. It is one of the true documents that rather put the
reader out of conceit with the humour of novels and plays. His
trials were about as much as any one could stand ; shipwrecked
and half drowned on some shore in Sligo Bay ; barely escaping
the knives of the wild Irish wreckers and the strictly legal
executioners of Fitzwilliam and Bingham ; stripped and plundered.
Froude gives one specimen of his wit, speaking of the pretty Irish
girl, who told him she was a Christian — * and so she was,' says
Cuellar, * as good a Christian as Mahomet.' Froude dpes not tell
the occasion ; the Irish girl had taken Cuellar's string of relics
1 Note A, Appendix.
i74 W. P. Ker
that he always wore round his neck, and put it round her own,
with the religious motive which is thus estimated by the Spanish
captain. By the way, Cuellar, before his shipwreck, had nearly
been hanged by the Duke of Medina Sidonia out of pedantry ;
Cuellar's ship had gone ahead in the North Sea, and was thought
by the Duke to be deserting. Another gentleman was hanged for
deserting, on no better grounds ; Cuellar was got off with diffi-
culty. His good luck is as frequent as his trials, though, in the
usual fashion of good luck, it mostly seems only to take a little
off the accumulated score of affliction and misery. Still, he got
through the wretched country, helped by priests in disguise, away
from the ruined monastery where bodies of Spaniards were hang-
ing from the gratings. He was guided to O'Rourke's country,
and found assistance there. One is rather disappointed to find
him not very much impressed, though not ungrateful. He had
reason to join in the song :
* O'Rourke's noble fare
Will ne'er be forgot,
By those who were there,
Or by those who were not.'
I will not repeat his adventures, but it is worth noting, and it is
not noted by Froude, that he writes down in Spanish the name
which the Irish used for the English ; the name is * Sasanas,' and
it does not need a commentary.
Cuellar at last got over to Scotland ; there was no help to be
found in the King : El Rey de Escocia no es nada ; he has no
authority, nor the manners of a king. But the Spanish captain
found his way to the Low Countries, fresh dangers springing up,
even at the very end of his travels.
Then he sits down, and writes his story ; and the curious thing
is that he knows, and sets down in words, the same contradiction
between reality and the description of reality that we feel to-day
when we go through these old memoirs, and think that once the
writers of them were toiling for their lives in the salt water,
though their story now is scarcely more than a dream. Cuellar,
at the time, writes to his correspondent, * All this will serve to
amuse you after dinner, like a passage in the books of chivalry.'
<jy porque V.m. se ocupe un poco despues de comer como por via de
entretenimiento en leer esta carta, que cast parecera sacada de algun
libro de caballerias, la escribo tan larga para que V.m. vea en los lances
y trabajos que me he visto.'
That is the humour of it. T los suenos sueno son.
The Spanish Story of the Armada 175
The Spanish records of the Armada let you in to all sorts of real
life, adventures like those of the books of chivalry, or, as we
should say, like a novel, but with the inexplicable force and mean-
ing that belongs to reality, that shows the thing c richt as it was '
— to come back to Barbour's phrase again. I have a Spanish
picture here1 of a little old Scotch tramp, held up by the Spaniards
off the Cornish coast after the first unlucky sailing of the Spanish
fleet. The Scillys were the rendezvous, and when the fleet was
dispersed by the storm, some captains made their way there, and
spent some time scouting about the Land's End. There, two
small vessels were taken, Saturday, 2nd July, N.S., one of them
going to France with coal. It had two friars on board, fugitives
from the north of Ireland, where the English had burnt two
chief monasteries, one Bernardine, the other Franciscan, and the
friars as well. This Scotch ship was twenty-two days out from a
port named 'Durat.' What is this ? Dunbarton ? All spellings
are possible in these documents, and it may have been Dunbarton.
It may have been Gourock.
What shall we say to the skipper's story that, when he left, the
common talk was that a nobleman named ' Bilonmat ' from Spain
had been in Scotland enlisting men (que hacia gente) and that the
King of Scotland had imprisoned him ? Was the skipper provid-
ing his Spanish entertainers with such news as he thought would
please them, and did he throw in f Ben Lomond ' as a well sound-
ing name in default of a better ? Anyhow, there is the little
Scotch coal gabbert, sailing in company with an Irish boat of a
similar build, the two of them caught off the Long Ships by
Spanish men-of-war on the 2nd July, N.S., 1588, in wild weather,
blowing hard from the north-east and the sea running high..
Juan Gomez with his hulks, as it happened, was not far off (op.
cit. ii. p. 1 64).
The moral is that the rivalry of England and Spain includes a
great and real likeness between the two nations. They belong to
the Ocean stream, and the Spanish yarns are of the same sort as
the English reports of voyages in Hakluyt. The people of the
Peninsula made a more direct attempt to turn their voyages into
poetry ; England has nothing to compare with the great Portu-
guese epic of the voyage of Vasco da Gama, the Spanish epic of
Chile. But I do not believe that any foreign nation is better
qualified than the people of this island to appreciate Os Lusiadas
of Camoens or La Araucana of Juan de Ercilla. "VV. P. KER.
1 Fernandez Duro, ii. p. 161.
176 The Spanish Story of the Armada
NOTE A.
SIR RICHARD BINGHAM, GOVERNOR OF CONNAUGHT, TO THE QUEEN,
December 3rd, 1588.
Laughton, Defeat of the Armada (Navy Records Society), ii. p. 299.
... I have adventured, in the consideration of my duty and bounty of your
Highness's favour toward me, your poor and faithful soldier, to present your
Highness now with these humble and few lines, as a thanksgiving to Almighty
God for these his daily preservations of your sacred person, and the continual
deliverance of us, your Majesty's subjects, from the cruel and bloody hands of
your Highness's enemies, and that lastly from the danger of the Spanish forces,
defeated first by your Majesty's navy in the narrow Seas, and sithence overthrown
through the wonderful handiwork of Almighty God, by great and horrible ship-
wrecks upon the coasts of this realm, and most upon the parts and creeks of this
province of Connaught, where it hath pleased your Majesty to appoint my service
under your Highness's Lord Deputy. Their loss upon this province, first and
last, and in several places, was 12 ships, which all we know of, and some
two or three more supposed to be sunk to seaboard of the out isles ; the men of
which ships did all perish in the sea, save the number of 1,100 or upward, which
we put to the sword ; amongst whom there were divers gentlemen of quality and
service, as captains, masters of ships, lieutenants, ensign-bearers, other inferior
officers, and young gentlemen, to the number of some 50, whose names I have
for the most part set down in a list,1 and have sent the same unto your Majesty ;
which being spared from the sword till order might be had from the Lord Deputy
how to proceed against them, I had special direction sent me to see them executed,
as the rest were, only reserving alive one, Don Luis de Cordova, and a young
gentleman, his nephew, till your Highness's pleasure be known.
NOTE B.
I offer an emendation in the text, in a very interesting paper printed by
Fernandez Duro, ii. p. 163 : report of the Alferez Esquivel who sailed in a
pinnace, June 27 N.S., from La Coruna to look for the scattered ships. He came
in for the wild weather off the Land's End a few days later ; running south before
the wind on July 2 they were pooped :
. . . nos dio un golpe de mar que nos sobrepuj6 por encima de la
popa de medio en medio, de manera que quedamos a ras con la mar, anegados
y del todo perdida la pinaza que con la mucha diligencia que se puso a agotar
el agua con barriles que desfondamos y baldes, y la hecha con \sic\ que se hizo
de todo lo que habia dentro, fu6 nuestro Sefior servido de que hiciese cabeza
la pinaza . . .
For ' la hecha con,' which is no sense, read 'la hecha9on.' The word, printed
'echazon,' comes a line or two later in the narrative, and is clearly required in this
place : ' We were pooped by a heavy sea, swamped and the pinnace done for, but
that doing all we could to bale with barrels, knocking the tops out, and buckets,
and with jettison (echazon) of all the stuff on board, by the favour of God we
brought the pinnace up and got way on her.' The whole story is worth reading.
1 [ Juan Gil, alfe'rez (ensign, ' Ancient ') was one of them, who picked up the
•Falmouth boatmen, July 2Oth, scouting in a zabra, Fernandez Duro, ii. p. 229.]
Clerical Life in Scotland in the
Sixteenth Century
A WRITER in a recent number of the Scottish Historical
Review has wisely remarked that, even making allowance
for the loss of our national records in 1660 and other internal
circumstances which led to the destruction of many valuable
documents, * it is evident, when we compare such scraps as have
survived with the wealth of documents in England and France,
that as a race we were bad at writing down.' Admitting that
our records of the transfer of lands are fairly good from the
sixteenth century, there is still a real lack of information about
the ordinary life of the people in medieval times. Our literary
and historical clubs have now published most, if not all, of the
more intimate diaries and letters relating to that period which can
be found, and even these do not amount to very much. But
there are some documents to which one would not naturally go
for information of the kind, which nevertheless, on closer
examination, prove quite a wealthy mine. Such, for instance, are
the Protocol Books of the notaries in various parts of the
country, of which a hundred and fifty-nine are preserved in
H.M. Register House, though many of them have been so care-
lessly kept that there is very little of any sort in them. Five of
these books have been printed in abstract by the Scottish Record
Society — a body which is far too little known even to students of
history, and which has for the last twenty-two years done a great
deal in the way of making many valuable sources of information
iccessible.
Notaries in Roman times were originally shorthand writers,
generally slaves or freedmen. The Emperor Constantine
ultimately constituted them into a kind of imperial chancery,
and they transacted much important public business. Our
present-day notaries are, however, the direct descendants of a
body of men organised by the Pope in the early days of
Christianity for the primary purpose of preserving the records of
178 Sir James Balfour Paul
the Church, though afterwards for many other purposes entirely
secular. They were papal officers, but in Scotland after the
Reformation the appointment of notaries was vested in the
Crown, and by an Act of 1563 they had not only to get a Royal
Warrant to practise, but also to be examined and admitted by
the Lords of Session. A notary on his admission was given a
book in which he had to note all the deeds executed by him and
to exhibit his subscription or signature. Some of these latter
were fine specimens of handwriting with elaborate ornamentation.
A notary was the depository of all kinds of curious information.
Persons in a community, whenever in doubt, flew to a notary, and
these recorded not only what they wanted done at once, but what
they thought might be done under certain future and prob-
lematical contingencies. A large part of a notary's business
consisted of transfers of lands ; but in addition to this there is a
great deal of incidental information about the manners and
customs of their clients, how they lived, loved, quarrelled, wor-
shipped or died, and in this way some insight is given to the
social and religious life of our ancestors.
The Scottish Record Society has published five of these Proto-
col Books, which cover a period extending from 1512 to 1578.
They have the advantage of relating to various parts of the
country : the earliest of them is that of Gavin Ros (1512-1532),
who resided in Ayr, but also had business connections in Lanark-
shire ; Alexander Gow (1540-1558) was vicar pensioner of Aber-
nethy, where he probably lived, but he had an office in Strath-
miglo also; * Sir ' William Corbet (1539-1555) was a Border
man, and his deeds deal almost entirely with matters pertaining
to the counties of Roxburgh and Berwick ; Gilbert Grote (1552-
1573) was a native of Caithness, but practised in Edinburgh and had
a widely extended clientele ; Thomas Johnsoun (1528-1578) was a
chantry priest in Linlithgow, combining with his office of notary
the administration of the altars of St. Salvator and St. John the
Evangelist in the parish church, and the cure of the Chapel of
St. Ninian at Blackness. He was also clerk to the Head Court
of the Burgh of Linlithgow.
Apart from transactions relating to the transfer of lands, per-
haps the majority of the deeds recorded in these books have to
do directly or indirectly with the Church. The admission of
chantry priests to their altars is a frequent occurrence ; their sym-
bolical investiture was by the delivery to them of the keys,
chalice, book, and altar furniture, and sometimes they undertook
Clerical Life in the Sixteenth Century 179
to do things quite outside the usual liturgical service. Thus on
Archibald Fawup being admitted as chaplain of the chapel of the
B.V.M. in Linlithgow Church, he undertook to build a canopy
or baldachino over the altar at a cost of £$ Scots. In the case of
the introduction of a higher dignitary to his office things were
more ceremoniously done than at the admission of a mere chantry
priest. At 10 o'clock in the forenoon of Sunday, the 25th of
July, 1534, there appeared at the high altar of Linlithgow
Church, Dom. Walter Heriot, clerk of the diocese of St.
Andrews, to be inducted as vicar. ' He held in his hands a Papal
Bull, sealed with the lead seals, and also with the red seals enclosed
in wood of the Apostolic See, and also of the ordinary of the
diocese of St. Andrews.' He was also instituted by a presenta-
tion from James Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, in all the
rights, fruits, rents, oblations and casual offerings, and also in the
house and garden belonging to the vicarage. The instrument of
investiture is formally witnessed by some dozen chaplains and by
Thomas Petticrieff (Pettigrew), Lyon King of Arms.
These chaplains and chantry priests were on the whole not
very high-class specimens of the clergy, though Johnsoun, who
is responsible for the Linlithgow Protocol Book, seems to have
been a man of some education, as, besides being a notary and
holding the three ecclesiastical appointments mentioned above,
he was also, as before stated, clerk to the Head Court of the
Burgh. With all emoluments, however, he can only have been
' passing rich on forty pounds a year ' ; an exiguous enough in-
come when calculated in Scottish currency. But as a general
rule the chantry priests were an uncouth, unlearned and
troublesome lot. In Linlithgow the town council, being patrons
of almost all the altars in the church, were able to keep some
control over them. This did not prevent them from quarrelling
amongst themselves. One Saturday morning in May, 1532,
Dominus Henry Louk, chaplain and curate of Linlithgow
Church, appeared as usual at the time of High Mass * dressed
in his ecclesiastical vestments.' He had, a fortnight before,
pronounced a sentence of excommunication on a certain John
Crumme, and seeing the culprit in church, where of course he
had no right to be, he asked John Pollart, another of the chap-
lains, whether he had absolved him. Pollart said he had, but
upon being called on to produce the document of absolution
refused to do so, doubtless with malicious intent, and, the notary
states, ' to prevent the curate from proceeding with the service.
180 Sir James Balfour Paul
Unfortunately we have no further information about the case,
but it is evident that Dom. Pollart was out for mischief. Chap-
lains were no doubt subject to the discipline of their ecclesiastical
superiors, but it probably required some very considerable lapse
of decorum before they were interfered with ; so long as he kept
reasonably sober and inoffensive and confined himself to the
society of the one lady who kept house for him, and who to all
intents and purposes was the wife of a somewhat unwilling celi-
bate, neither public opinion nor ecclesiastical authorities would
interfere with an easy-going chantry priest. But some sort of
discipline was certainly put in force : there was quite a lively
quarrel in 1513 between Mr. Arthur Hamilton, provost of the
Collegiate Church of Hamilton, and Mr. Robert Hamilton, the
commissary of the district. The provost ordered the commissary
to deliver to him all chaplains residing in the college whose
names were in the commissary books as requiring correction.
The provost alleged that he was responsible for their correction,
but this the commissary stoutly denied, saying that they were
under his jurisdiction and had been under that of his predecessors
4 by approved custom.' There were protests and appeals, and
ultimately the commissary appointed a hearing to take place in
the aisle of St. Michael in the church of Glasgow. The last we
hear of this case is of the provost, through his procurator, de-
manding letters of appeal from the commissary; but, unfortun-
ately, the deeds relating to this dispute are very illegible and not
much can be gathered from them. Perhaps not very much was
done, as the provost died within a year.
These chaplains or altar-priests must have been very difficult
to deal with. They were generally illiterate, and many of them
could only with difficulty stumble through the words of the
mass : they were poorly paid, as even the endowments of the
best altars cannot have amounted to a large sum. We know
that in the thirteenth century the established salary for a chaplain
was only a hundred shillings a year, with perhaps the gift of
some old clothes from the rector. Of course the emoluments
were larger in the sixteenth century, though it is doubtful if
their purchasing power was much greater. The daily life of the
majority of them, as Dr. Patrick points out in his Statutes of the
Scottish Church, left much to be desired, and the too belated
efforts of the Church authorities to reform the lives of the lower
(and indeed the higher also) clergy did not have much effect.
But some efforts were seriously made : thus we read that on the
Clerical Life in the Sixteenth Century 181
4th of June, 1555, Sir Hugh Curry, Rector of Esse and Dean of
Christianity (or in other words Rural Dean) of Linlithgow,
appeared in the parish church there, called the roll of all the
curates in the deanery, noted the absentees, and proceeded to
read ' in a loud clear voice ' the Provincial and Synodal Statutes
for the year, with the new additions for the synods of St.
Andrews and Edinburgh. He then ordered certain of the
statutes which more particularly concerned the curates to be
copied by them, and not only so, but commanded them to pro-
duce the copies at the next chapter to be held at Linlithgow on
the third Holy Day after the Feast of the Exaltation of the
Holy Cross. This would give them from the beginning of June
till October to make the copies. The statutes were presumably
those issued by the Provincial Council at Edinburgh in 1549
and 1551 and by the Provincial Council at Linlithgow in
August of the former year. Of the fifty-six statutes promul-
gated by the Edinburgh Council at least a dozen dealt with the
life, duties and discipline of the inferior clergy, so that each of
those concerned would have a quantity of matter to transcribe
not of any great extent in itself, but which would tax their
unskilled hands considerably.
While the actual permanent endowments of the altars served
by the chantry priests were on a very modest scale they had
always the chance of getting money from the faithful for masses
to be said for their souls for a limited time : thus a poor fellow
John Gumming, a burgess of Edinburgh, ' himself now lying in
grave peril,' obliged himself to pay to Henry Louk, curate of
Linlithgow, the sum of £5 Scots for a year for the souls of his
wife and children who had just died of the pestilence in Linlith-
gow in 1530. And again in the following year we find Allan
John, the heir-apparent of Allan Lychtman, burgess of Linlith-
gow, giving his consent to Allan's expressed intention to mortify
a portion of his heritage to the church for prayers for the safety
of his soul. It may be observed that this deed was executed at
six o'clock on a Sunday morning in November, 1531, at Allan's
house, which looks as if Allan felt himself drawing very near
death. It is difficult to see why the heir's consent was necessary
to such a pious act, unless some previous deed had given him
some sort of control over Allan's property.
One of the most curious ecclesiastical disputes which is com-
memorated in these books is that between James Brown, school-
master of Linlithgow, and Henry Louk, the curate of the
1 82 Sir James Balfour Paul
parish. It is notarially recorded on 9th January, 1538-9, that
Brown had made the following statement to Henry Forrest, a
bailie of the burgh, and that it had done much harm and scandal
to the said curate in the minds of his parishioners : the statement,
to be fully appreciated, must be given in the vernacular :—
' Sayand that Schir Hendrie Louk, curate of Linlithgow, held his
barnis that he kennit in his scoule at sic subjection, aw and
bandone and siclik himself, that he and the said barnis behufit to
enter in the kirk to goddis service at the latter peilss on festuale
dais baith mess and evensang and settis doun in the said kirk on
cauld stanis, quhen tha migcht have dune gret proffit and steed
to thaimselves to have levit in the schull, tynand thair tyme.'
Now this is excellent Scots and tersely put. We can see the
indignant curate stung to the quick at such remarks, which were
probably quite true, rushing to the notary to have them put on
record so long as they were fresh in mind, probably with the
view of future proceedings. And we can quite understand the
schoolmaster's point of view. On cold winter days he and his
pupils that he taught at school were obliged by this exacting
curate, who was evidently a terror, and who kept both master
and scholars in subjection, awe and * bandone ' or under command,
to attend church both at morning and evening service, not, be it
noted, on Sundays merely, but on saints' days during the week.
They had to enter church ' at the latter peals,' that is to say as
the bells were just ' ringing in,' and when there had to sit
through the long service, not in comfortably furnished pews, as
would be the case now, but 'on cauld stanis' in a church which
was not heated. We sympathise with the sensible remarks of
Mr. Brown, that under the circumstances the children were simply
* tynand thair tyme,' and that they would have been much more
profitably and usefully employed in learning their lessons in
school.
The clergy, high and low, no doubt wielded great power in those
days. Excommunication was a weapon which in the last resort
few could resist. We have mentioned above the quarrel between
this same ' Schir Henry ' Louk and John Pollart, one of the
chaplains, as to the excommunication of a man. It will be
remembered that the quarrel arose on the question whether or
not there was a man under the sentence of excommunication
present at the service which was going to be celebrated. No one,
of course, under such a serious censure could be a partaker of
any of the sacraments of the Church. But it was sometimes
Clerical Life in the Sixteenth Century 183
a
evaded surreptitiously. In January, 1544-5, Robert Stark,
parishioner at Lenzie, appeared before Malcolm, Lord Fleming
(Lenzie being one of his five baronies), and being examined and
questioned, admitted that he had confessed to one priest and
taken the sacrament at the hands of another within the Laigh
Kirk of Glasgow, notwithstanding that he was under excom-
munication in his own parish church of Lenzie. It will be
noticed that it was in a civil and not an ecclesiastical court that
this wrongdoer was arraigned, and the phrase 'examined and
questioned ' suggests that he may have been not only examined,
but that his confession was extorted from him by torture. What
his ultimate fate was we are not told, but if it involved a capital
sentence, that could only be pronounced by a civil court, and
that is perhaps why he was tried before Lord Fleming.
Excommunication was indeed a serious matter as well from
the social as the spiritual side. Not only were excommunicated
persons, deprived of the rites of the Church, but they were
ostracised from ordinary society and they could not bear witness
in any civil court. One of the most extraordinary cases recorded
in these protocols is one in which William Smyth confessed
before the Chancellor of the Metropolitan Church of Glasgow
and the Dean of Kyle and Cunningham, saying he was willing to
obey the commands of Holy Mother Church in all things,
though he had been excommunicated by James Beaton, Arch-
bishop of Glasgow, * only because he had in his house and family
a male servant . . . who would serve him in honourable services.'
This, of course, on the face of it was an impossible cause for so
heavy a church censure, but William must have had something
on his conscience which told him he was not free from fault as he
offered to submit to the correction of the chancellor and dean
'or other prudent persons.' This occurred in August, 1516.
On the other hand, the Church had to be prudent on its side,
and not launch its thunders without due consideration. A single
private individual might be easily brought into subjection, but it
was different when a body of decent citizens were involved.
Some dispute had arisen in the town of Ayr between the curate
of the parish and certain inhabitants, the result being that the
latter were incontinently excommunicated by the former. But
they did not take this sentence lying down ; on the contrary,
James Tate, one of the aldermen, and afterwards provost, entered
a spirited protest that three burgesses and sundry other neigh-
bours and indwellers in the burgh had been unjustly and
184 Sir James Balfour Paul
unlawfully excommunicated by Sir Henry Hunter, the curate of
the burgh, as he is called, and that they had not been lawfully cited
before the dean. He also made the rather contradictory asser-
tion that the dean had postponed their conviction until the eighth
day after the synod of Glasgow, thus admitting that the matter
had in some form been before that functionary. Another instru-
ment was recorded at the same time by the alderman requiring
the curate to produce the letters of excommunication, but this he
refused to do, which scored one for the parishioners. Then the
curate gets another deed put on record, in which he called on the
three burgesses to remove themselves from divine service in the
parish Church of Ayr, because they were excommunicated by
the dean. All these deeds were executed on Sunday, the I4th
April, 1521, probably just before service, and because the three
burgesses in question refused to move, the curate * protested for
remedy of law.' What the final result was the Protocol Book
does not reveal, but as we find the burgesses in question witness-
ing deeds and doing other legal acts not long after, no great
harm can have come to them. No person could perform any
legal function when under the censure of the Church ; so we find
Katherine Davidson in Ayr appealing from the decision of certain
arbiters in a case she had against John M'Cormak on the ground
that two of them were bound by a sentence of excommunication
at the time of their pronouncing their decree, f and for that cause
were not fit to minister justice by any title public or private.'
There was an interesting deed executed on 3rd February,
1517-18, which shows the remuneration a chaplain expected to
get when serving a charge for another parson. Geo. Edward
Campbell, a chaplain, had evidently been serving for some time in
the church of the Blessed Mary of Grace of Kyle, in the parish of
Monkton, of which Mr. John Cunynghame was preceptor. The
latter agreed to induct Campbell to the office and administration
of the altar and of divine service in the church at Whitsunday,
1520, and till then to pay him ten merks yearly : after that date
Campbell was to get yearly a brown horse or five merks in
money, whichever he preferred, and eight merks of money, four
being payable at Easter, and four at Michaelmas. In addition to
this he was to have the usual chaplain's chamber where he was
then living, with certain lands adjoining. It is not clear whether
he was to get the casualties due to the church and the offerings,
or whether the preceptor reserved these for himself.
As time went on and the character of the Roman clergy sank
Clerical Life in the Sixteenth Century 185
lower and lower we find instances of benefices being gifted to
their relatives or sold outright to third parties in the most
irregular way. In 1544 Henry Louk, chaplain of the Altar of
the Blessed Virgin in Linlithgow Church, handed over to his
niece, Marion Crawford, in view of her approaching marriage to
John Thomson, an annual rent of eighteen shillings yearly
payable to him as chaplain, ' to enable the said John Thomson to
maintain the said Marion at bed and board, as other burgesses of
the said burgh.' The gift of course was only to hold good
during Louk's life, but the donee, the editors remark, did not
live long to enjoy it. After the Reformation the emoluments of
such benefits were often diverted from their original purpose and
applied for purely secular ends. The Hamiltons of Kincavell
had founded the altar of St. Anne in Linlithgow Church, and
though the advowson had been forfeited to the king in 1542 on
account of the 'heresy' of the patron, the family seems to have
got it into their hands again later, for in 1576 James Hamilton,
a younger son of the family, got a grant from his father of the
benefice * for his support in the schools.' Similarly, Henry
Livingston, son of Alexander Livingston of Castlecary, had a
grant from his father, the patron of the benefice of the chapel of
the Blessed Virgin in Linlithgow, for the same purpose, ' that he
may become a learned man, wise and honest.'
Occasionally the emoluments of a benefice were handed over
on condition that the donor was suitably supported during his
life. Thus the revenues of the altar of Our Lady in Torphichen
Church and those of the altar of St. Eloi in Linlithgow were
disponed by the chaplain, John Pollart, to James Pollart of
Corstoun. The details are curious : the chaplain was to have
* his honest sustentatioun in meat and drink as ane honest man
aucht to have and an honest chalmer ' at Corstoun, together with
bedding, fire and candle, the washing of all his linen and bedding,
and a payment of twenty merks a year in money.
It is rather singular to find in these Protocol Books so little
reference made to the children of priests, for, from what we know
of the habits of the clergy, there must have been many, all of
course, in the eye of the Church, illegitimate. But in one
instance we hear of letters of dispensation being issued by
Andrew Forman, Archbishop of St. Andrews in 1516, a certain
Adam Gordon, a scholar, ' being the offspring of a priest and a
single woman,' enabling him to take holy orders, receive a
benefice, and undertake the cure of souls.
1 86 Sir James Balfour Paul
A priest did not necessarily have ' a cure of souls ' ; he might
hold a much lower place in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The
position of parish clerk was open to him, though it was not
infrequently filled by a layman, but as it was necessary for him to
be at least able to read, the majority of such posts would be held
by persons in minor orders. Bishop Dowden has some interest-
ing remarks on this office in his book The Medieval Church in
Scotland. He identifies it with the office of Aquaebajulus, an
official who went on Sundays and festival days to the houses of
the parishioners and sprinkled the people with holy water,
receiving in turn * alms' which came later to be 'dues.' He also
assisted the celebrant at mass ; he was invested in his office by
the delivery to him of a water stoup (amphora} filled with holy
water, and a phial and sprinkler. We may think in these days
that the election of a minister by the votes of the male and
female members of the congregation is a very modern innovation,
but we may be surprised to learn that it was in this very way
that a parish clerk was elected to his post. Several instances
of such elections occur in the Protocol Books. In October,
1513, the parishioners of Coylton ' with one voice ' chose Matthew
Crawford to be parish clerk. The voting seems to have extended
over four or five days from Sunday the 23rd October till at least
the following Wednesday ; upwards of seventy persons voted, of
whom at least eight were women. The post seems to have been
a sort of appanage of the Crawford families, as the last holder
also bore that name, and in a deed recorded immediately before
the one narrating the election George Crawford of Waterhead
undertook that if Matthew Crawford succeeded in getting the
appointment a certain John . . . should ' have all the conveniences
and uses which he had in the time of the late James Crawford,'
and that he should do good and faithful service to Matthew in
the clerkship as he had done to James. This rather indicates
that while drawing the emoluments of the clerkship the holders
performed its duties by deputy.
But such elections were not always carried through so quietly
and without opposition. In November, 1524, Adam Reid was
elected parish clerk of Mauchline by the votes of 127 of the
males and ten of the female parishioners. On Sunday, 6th
November, Reid was duly inducted to his office by delivery to
him of the usual stoup and phial, and before this ceremony
Hugh Campbell of Loudoun, the sheriff of Ayr, required the
parishioners present to intimate if the election did not please
Clerical Life in the Sixteenth Century 187
them, but they all remained silent. While, however, the
parishioners assented, opposition came from another source.
We are told how one David Lundie ' endued with a linen habit '
appeared and declared himself willing to serve in the office
having been instituted thereto by the convent of Melrose, the
patrons, Mauchline being a vicarage of that abbey. He also
protested against the admission of Reid, and said he was hindered
1 by the strong hands ' from ministering in the office. Sir John
Liddal, a monk of the abbey, of the Cistercian order, also
appeared and asserted that the sheriff was grievously injuring
the rights, liberty, convenience and profit of the monastery by
soliciting the votes of the parishioners for Adam Reid, ' his
servant,' and declared that the office both now and formerly
belonged to the abbot and convent of Melrose by full right. On
the other hand, the sheriff stoutly denied (so far as can be made
out from a somewhat defective document) that he had done or
ever wished to do anything against the liberties of the monastery.
There must, indeed, have been quite an exciting scene in Mauch-
line Church that Sunday morning. Apparently, for the time
being at least, Reid succeeded in retaining his appointment, but he
did not hold it long, as on nth April, 1529, John Lundie was
inducted, through his procurator Sir William Ard, chaplain to the
parish clerkship of Mauchline, the appointment being made by
letters of provision written on parchment under the common seal
of the abbot and convent of Melrose. There does not seem
to have been any opposition by the parishioners, who were not
on this occasion called on to give their votes. Whether this
John Lundie who was now presented was the same as that David
Lundie who was formerly the candidate favoured by the abbey
it is impossible to say.
It is doubtful whether the clerks in the above-mentioned cases
were in ecclesiastical orders, but in that of the election of a clerk
to the parish of Dalrymple we are on surer ground. Sir Thomas
Mure, chaplain, through his procurator, John Mure, in Wodland,
resigned his office of clerk in the hands of John Campbell, one
of his parishioners. The election of the new clerk was made
by votes, but the notary has not filled in the names of the
parishioners voting, though he has left a page and a half blank
for the purpose. They unanimously chose Sir Alexander Jame-
soun to fill the vacant post, and after this John Campbell, in
name and by command of the other parishioners and in their
presence, 'or of the greater and wiser portion' of them, formally
1 88 Sir fames Balfour Paul
inducted Sir Alexander to the clerkship. All this was done at
the time of high mass in the parish church on the 2yth
September, 1528.
In the case of the election of a parish clerk to Cumnock when
Sir Thomas Crawford (evidently a priest) was chosen, only some
five women voted out of a large number of parishioners. He
was inducted not only by the delivery to him of the amphora of
holy water and the phial, but also of the church keys. And it is
curious to note that, so far as can be gathered from an imperfect
deed, his first act was to read an admonition to the people to see
that the various emoluments pertaining to the office were forth-
coming at the usual times.
Sometimes, however, the parishioners did not get it all their
own way, and the patrons carried matters with a high hand as
regards the presentation of the parish clerk to their churches. In
May, 1522, Sir John M'Tere, a chaplain, executed a revocation
of his pretended resignation of the parish clerkship of St. Kevoca
(St. Quivox), in the diocese of Glasgow, on the ground that it
had only been made by him from fear and dread of death, as he
had declared on oath in the hands of Robert, abbot of Paisley,
who asserted himself to be the patron of the said clerkship, and
who had apparently nominated Ninian Wallace. Whether
M'Tere succeeded in keeping his post is not certain ; both he
and Wallace are named in several subsequent deeds, but in none
of them is either designated parish clerk.
An election to the parish clerkship of Auchinleck in 1527
reveals a very curious state of affairs. Upwards of seventy
parishioners, including a fair proportion of women, elected
John Lakprivick, a minor, to the office. He was the son of the
former parish clerk, also a John Lakprivick, and we are frankly
told that the office was vacant on account of the inability of the
last-mentioned John to perform the duties on account of the crime
of homicide committed by him. Here occurs one of the most dis-
tressing lacunae in these volumes ; just at this exciting point the
deed becomes defective, and we are left to imagine the particulars
of the crime. Apparently there must have been much local sym-
pathy for the perpetrator, as the number of voters testifies. They
elected then this boy, who was duly invested with the usual
symbols, rather more definitely described than in other cases,
namely, a wooden stoup containing holy water, a sprinkler, a
pewter phial, and the keys of the church. As the presentee was
of too tender an age to perform the duties of his office personally,
Clerical Life in the Sixteenth Century 189
he nominated a certain Patrick Campbell to be his c suffraigan,' c to
minister in the office until John himself should be found fit and
of sufficient age and discretion to minister.' Truly an amazing
election.
The cases given above are all from the Protocol Book of Gavin
Ross, and refer to the county of Ayr. But in other parts of the
country such elections were carried out much in the same way.
Succession from father to son was not infrequent. At Earlston,
for instance, Alexander Home of Carolside, had been parish
clerk, and on the fourth Sunday of Mid Lent, jist March, 1549,
the parishioners convened in the church and elected his son
James to the office, into which he was thereupon inducted by Sir
James Ker, the curate of the church. And in the parish of
Merton we find Andrew Haliburton, the laird of the place,
passing to the dwelling-places of the parishioners and craving
their votes for his younger son Andrew, for the office of parish
clerk. And lay persons of even higher rank were elected to such
a post, probably owing to the influence of powerful friends. We
are told how, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon of ist November,
1548, Archibald Earl of Angus, lord of the barony and regality
of Abernethy, and his tenants, parishioners of Abernethy, and
other parishioners of the same, compeared in the parish church,
and ' with one consent and assent and without disagreement '
chose a qualified man, David, son of David Murray, Knight, of
Arnegosk, to be their parish clerk. He was inducted in the
usual way, but further procedure in his case at least seemed to be
necessary, as the electors prayed William, Bishop of Dunblane, to
admit him to his office, and to grant him his ordinary confirma-
tion. It is perhaps reasonable to doubt whether Mr. Murray
would have had the same unanimous call had the Earl of Angus
not been personally present at the election.
Such are a few of the incidents relating to ecclesiastical life
which have been gleaned from the pages of the Protocol Books
mentioned. They are of interest as throwing light on the clerical
life of the period dealt with. In a future paper 1 hope to give
some illustrations from the same sources of the manners and
customs of the people themselves, and of the conditions under
which they lived. JAMES BALFOUR PAUL.
Le Testament du Gentil Cossoys
HT^HE following unpublished verses are contained in MS.
1 Fran£ais 24315 of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris,
described as Recueil de Poesies Composees par Jean Trotter, Molinet,
Pierre Fabri, Cretin, Caste/, Jehan Braconnier de Bordeaux, Guillaume
Tasserie, et Autres Auteurs Anonymes.^ This MS. belonged to the
Collection La Valliere^ of which it was number 2926. It is on
sixteenth century paper, and is written in Ancicnne Bdtarde script.
It contains one hundred and sixty folios (285 X2oo mm.), and is
bound in calf with the arms of d'Urf£.2 Le Testament du Gentil
Cossoys is found on ff. 92^95. It is written in a dialect which has
some resemblance to that spoken in Picardy and Artois, but its
main characteristic is the use of a jargon suggestive of the bastard
French which must have been used by many Scottish soldiers
of fortune. Eustache Deschamps had written of the ' nouvel
langaige' which was heard daily by the miserable peasants of
France as band after band of men-at-arms passed through their
fields with their strange speech and stranger oaths —
* Je ne scay qui aura le nom
D'aler par les champs desormais
Un temps vi qu'Engle"s et gascon
Parloient tuit, et clers et lais :
4 San Capdet ' et < Saint George nfaist \ '
Adonc estoient en usaige,
Et redoubtez par leurs meffais :
Toudis vient un novel langaige.' 3
Rabelais' reference in Pantagruel (ii. 9) to Panurge's display of
1 1 am indebted to a reference in one of the notes in M. Pierre
Champion's Frattfois Villon (ii. 178, n. 3), for my introduction to these
verses, and to M. Louis Jacob, Paris, for a description of the MS. and some
useful suggestions.
2 Pierre d'Urf£ was grand tcuyer of France under Louis XI. and Charles VIII.,
cf. Memoires de Philippe de Commynes, passim.
3 Champion, Les Societes dangereuses du XV. slide in Sainian, Sources de f Argot
Anclen (Paris, 1912), i. 365.
Le Testament du Gentil Cossoys 191
Scots is well known,1 probably better known than the daring
adoption of the kilt by the three 'dames de Paris' of the
Fabliau* The impression which the Scottish soldiers of for-
tune of the fifteenth century made in France was not
altogether favourable, and Villon hinted that the best covering
or protection for a Scotsman's throat was a halter.3 In the
Argot of the period the terms Ecossais and Pillard had the
same meaning.4 One of the criminal vagabonds whose name
appears more than once in the Proces des Coquillards of 1455
is Jehan d'Escosse.5 It is possible that this worthy was the
* Jehan mon amy, qui les fueilles desnoue ' of one of Villon's
Ballades Jargonesques. In any event the pathos of the following
verses must be discounted by the recollection of their satirical
intention.
The verses date themselves I5th February, 1509, and the date
is appropriate if it be recalled that in that year the first measures
were taken by Louis XII. to replace the bands of mercenaries to
which many Scotsmen had belonged by a regular military establish-
ment on a national basis.6 If I am correct in treating the verses
as historical and satirical, their date supports my view. It is
possible, of course, that they may have been written long after
1 509, but this seems to me improbable. The verses have all the
marks of that period. The other verses which the MS. contains
all belong to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and include
the Ballade centre les Ennemis de La France^ which M. Longnon
1 W. P. Ker, Panurgis English in An English Miscellany (Oxford, 1901).
2Montaiglon, Fabliaux, iii. 150.
8 Champion, Francois Villon (Paris, 1913), ii. 1 54. For contemporary descriptions
of the uniform of the Scots Guard v. Michel, i. 275.
4 /£/</., ii. 178, cf.—
' J'ay la conscience aussi large
Qui les housseaulx d'un Escossoys '
and —
* Us sont larsons comme Ecossoys
Qui vont pillotant les villages,'
quoted by Champion in Sainean, op. cit. ii. 355, cf. Michel, Les Ecossais en France,
i. 124.
5 Sainean, 94, 402, 416.
6 The date may be read to mean 1499, and, if this earlier date be adopted, the
verses may refer to John Cunningham, Captain of the Scots Guard, who died at
Vercelli in 1495 of wounds received at the siege of Novara. Michel, op. cit.
i. 232.
192 David Baird Smith
has attributed to Francois Villon.1 Most of the verses have
reference to actual events or persons.
The debt which the author owes to the school of ballad-writers
to which he belonged, and to Villon, who gave the form a new
significance, is evident, and may be observed even in details such
as the references to ' ung petit sainct georch ' and ' pocras ' which
recall 11. 1219 and 1477 °f Le Testament of the Master. The
' Testament ' as a literary form can be traced to the decadence of
the Latin world. It was very popular, and our national literature
contains several interesting specimens.2 If the Testament du
Gentil Cossoys belongs, as has been suggested, to the Artois-Picardy
region, it has an interesting relation to the form of popular verse
known as the Conge, which was originated by Jean Bodel and
developed by the bourgeois of Arras.3
DAVID BAIRD SMITH.
LE TESTAMENT DU GENTIL COSSOYS
Puisque mon gaich et tout mon pontement
Laty rompre voy bin que ma col cas
Moy 1'aury fait ung belle testament
Tantost moy mesm Dieu plaist que moy trespas
Vin sa, couri, pry vous petit compas
Ma 1'ordonnas car Testy grand malad
Preny papier, crivy cela moy pas
Ma cueur ja pens mory tant Testy fad.
ii
Item premier a Diou et Nostre Dam
Sainct Michel TAnch et Sainct Trignen de Cos
Moy recommand tout entier mon povre am
Et seroit y encor vingt foys plus gros
Ouand mort prent moy, faity ung bon grand fos
El chimetier resabz de la glis
Et la me couch tout du long de ma dos,
Bin a mon ais comme sera de guis.
1Oeuvres (Paris, 1914), 82. The title in the MS. is Ballade centre Its medisans
de France,
2 Routh, Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times, Cam. Hist. Eng. Lit., iii.
83, and Peignot, Choix de Testamens (Dijon, 1829), ii. 239, et sqq.
'Paris, Litterature Franfaise (Paris, 1905), p. 203.
Le Testament du Gentil Cossoys 193
in
Mon secateur vostre vous me bon prest
Chanty de mes tout la jour hardement,
(fol. 93.) Quand quelque chos de bon couraich me prest
Moy tout vous rend la jour dil jugement.
Mon grand courrach, sallad et billement,
Pour vostra corps garde bin de larrons
Quarante ens plus vault ung foys vraiement
Moy donne vous avecque mon perons.
IV
Mon brigand in,' gratebras et sallad,
Dag, javrelin, albard et gorgery,
Donne a ma paich sert moy sain et malad
Bin congny ly que laty grand marry
Quand ma courtault de son morb 1'a gary
Moy monte luy comme ung petit Sainct Georch,
Mais il a ty ung grand curagery
Menge farsin par tout jusquez son gorch.
Moy les aussi une bell heritaich
A mon parens, barbis, beuf, vach et veaulx
Fait comme il veult entre luy ung partaich
Tout pellemel preny pore et bouveaux
L'erbe de prez pour menge la chevaulx,
Gransch, massons, couvri tous de festus,
Tappissery, vais d'argent et joiaulx,
Moy donne tout, laty bin revestus.
VI
Item j'ordon j'auri six torch de chir,
Deux gros chandel acusson de mon arm,
C'est par amour le bon roy nostre sir
Que j'amery grandement par mon arm
Ung cu de gueul tout seme" de gros larm
Et une cueur navre de fleich ou dard
Pour monstrere que j'aty bon gen d'arm
Dessus mon fos planty une tandard.
VII
Moy ne veult moy sonnery me tempest
La choch il est in bones ung trop grant tail
Mais je jorry sonner yn grand trompet
L'est advis moy que j'entry en batail.
Ma compaignon qui n'aury plus chinquail
Qui 1'et casse de tout saich moy veul
Ploury bin fort ou de tot ou de tail
Ma paich et luy faity trestous la deul.
194 David Baird Smith
VIII
Tout bon Cossoys je cuid se trouvery
Myner ma corps avec son sepultur ;
Bel ocqueton carchy d'orfavery
Vien deux et deux com 1'aty bon droictur ;
Qui aury fam ni soif pren son pastur
Maiz que pour moy dit ung beau profundis :
Se my parly a Diou par avantur
Moy pry qui vien trestout en paradis.
IX
Couury dity une belle raison
Tout continent que moy vient a 1'esglis
Mess et vagil, psaultier et crie 1'oyson
Chanty bien ault dung bon voix sans faintis
Le chantre a dit de music gros assis
Ung mess a not tantost sy ly plaira
Moy donne a eulx ung bouteil fort exquis
Tout plain pocras pour chante labara.
Item moy veult qu'on fait ung beau donne,
Vin plain de pot a cule de potaich
A court ouvert mason bin bandonn£
Veult bin chacun tout vivre davantaich.
(fol. 94.) Mon rob, pourpoint, chaus, ouseaulx et bagaich,
Mon troussemen, arc, pantoufl, brodaquins,
Tot la livre par la main de ma paich
A 1'dpital pour vestir la coquins.
XI
Ainsi moy pas mon testamen sans mocq,
Et ne vouly qu'il a point de rabat ;
Tout testement d' aultreffbys je revocq,
Tendez-vous bin, que person n'a debat.
Cryvry, brouyly, tout signy de mon pat
Presens ma paich qui ne Test pas bin ais
Quinz en fevrier quand y couri pour dat
Mil quatre cens quatre vingf xvj* et traiz.
XII
Mon terrement laty bin ordonn^
N'atendre plus vivre el mon, jour ny heur
Puysque fortun tient moy pour bandonne
Va Jehan de Cos, c'est bin fort que toy meur
Ne parly plus, ne faity plus d' honneur
Vous est cass£ et de gaich et de dam
Ja prens vault mieulx pour pontement meilleur
Te rens 4 Diou da bin, da corps et d'am.
Le Testament du Gentil Cossoys 195
XIII
Adieu le prins gorrieux et mon mignon,
Adieu mon dam, adiou mon marmouzel,
Adieu 1'archiez, capetain, compaignon,
Adieu le paich, adieu fil et pucel,
Adieu bon gens, adieu celuy et eel
Qui nourrit moy quand laty en la guerr,
Adiou trestout le bon vil et castel,
Adieu fourrieux, mon logeon est en terr.
XIV
(fol. 94 vo.) Adiou par tout nobe royaulm de Frans
Adiou comman le povre pa'fs de Cos
Moy vient tantost prendre ma corps par trans
Et si n'aury horion, plaie ne bos,
Et non pourtant ne fault porter 1'endos
Dont moy pry vous que une belle paraf
Tout vis vif 1'autre coste mon fos
Contry ung mur crivoy mdy cest pitaph :
xv
L' Epitaph
Le fleich de mort qui tout hom desnatur,
Dont sa vivant une foys fait hommaich
Et fault qu'il rend tribut a dam natur
En despouillant tout sa dun et plumaich,
Couchy davant tout plat, dont c'est damaich,
Ung gentilhom Cossoys soubz ceste lam
Dont ung chandel encontre quelque ymaich :
Pry Dieu trestous pren mercy de son am.
XVI
Belle, plaisant, mignonne pourtraictur
Ault il estoit, gorriere de corsaich
Vous dit que c'est droit ymaich en painctur
C'est grand ydeur comme fut il bin saich
Pour garderi tousjours queique passaich
Fort ardement ou ne laity pas am
Sur tot Cossoys ly saury bin 1'usaich.
Pry Dieu trestout pren mercy de son am.
XVII
Oncq son vivant fit tort a creatur
Dessoubz la champs pour vivre davantaich
Tant seulement s'il trouvry davantur
Poul ou chappon que 1'aury pris son paich
Gard corps la rayson temps non pas grand aaich
(fol. 95.) Laty devot a Dieu le Nostre Dam
196 David Baird Smith
Sept piedz de terr 1'a choisy pour partaich
Pry Dieu trestout pren mercy de son am.
XVIII
Prins, Jehan de Cos demory pour hostaich
Vaquez la vers que tout son corps entam
A ffin qu'il ait a sa proppre heritaich
Pry Dieu trestout pren mercy de son am.
TRANSLATION
Now that my pay and health are all broken, I see full well that my neck
is broken : I would make a fair testament ; now God wills that I depart :
Come, run, my little comrade, I pray you make it for me, for I am very
sick : take paper, write, that is beyond me : I think my heart is dying, so
weak it is.
First to God and Our Lady, St. Michael the Angel and St. Ninian of
Scotland, I wholly recommend my poor soul, and should I be even twenty
times bigger than I am, when death takes me dig a good large trench in
the graveyard underneath the church, and there I shall lay me on my back,
quite at my ease, as I would wish to be.
My executor, would you, my good priest, sing masses boldly all day
long : if you will show me good will in this matter, I will repay you all
at the Day of Judgement : my large cuirasse my helm and harness to shield
your body from robbers forty years and more, I must give you them with
my spurs.
My brigandine, arm pieces, casque, dagger, dirk, halbert, and gorget I
give to my page who serves me sound or sick : I know that he is very
sorry : when he has healed my horse from his sickness I mount him like a
little St. George, but a great distemper has seized him ; glanders eats him
even to his throat.
I leave also a fair heritage to my relations : sheep, oxen, cows and
calves. Let them divide them as they will, take pellmell pigs and
bullocks, meadow grass for horses' pasture, granges, houses thatched with
straw, furnishings, silver vessels and jewels. All I give them ; are they not
well provided ?
Further, I provide that I shall have six waxen candles, two large candle-
sticks, and an escutchon of my armes. Tis for love of the good King, our
Lord, whom I love greatly, by my soul ! Gules gutte1 azure and a heart
pierced with arrow or with dart, to show that I have been a good man-at-
arms : over my grave set up a standard.
I'll have no tolling bells, for they disturb me, laying too great a tax
upon my purse : sound rather a loud trumpet : it will seem to me that I
am entering into battle. My comrade, who will have no more regaling,
Le Testament du Gentil Cossoys 197
having lost everything, I would have him weep aloud— let my page and he
do all the mourning.
Every good Scotsman will be there, I think, to bear my body to the
grave : fair acton laden with gold embroidery, come two by two in the
proper manner : he who is hungry or athirst let him be supplied, but let him
say for me a good De profundis : and if to God perchance I speak, I shall
pray him that they all arrive in Paradise.
Go, offer a fitting prayer whenever to the church I come, mass, evangel,
psalmody and Kyrie Eleison ; sing loud and heartily : The singers have
sung a well sung mass whene'er it pleases them : I give to them a delicious
bottle well filled with hipocras to sing a Libera.
Further, I wish that a good meal be made, bottles of wine and basins of
soup, with open heart and open house. I hope that each will have a merry
time. My wardrobe, tunics, hose, shoes, and baggage, my clothes, bow, my
slippers — all these I bequeath by the hand of my page to the almshouse to
clothe the poor.
Thus I make my will in all seriousness and I desire that no one reduce
it : I revoke all previous wills ; take care that no one raises any question ;
written complete and signed with my fist, present my page, who is not at
his ease, dated the fifteenth of February fourteen hundred eighty sixteen
and thirteen (three ?)
My succession is well ordered : I may not look in this world for another
day or hour : since fortune holds me for lost, go, John of Scotland ; 'tis
fitting that you die : say no more ; no further tributes make ; your wages
and your lady both are gone : learn now that 'tis better for your good
estate that you should yield to God your gear, your body and your
soul.
My glorious prince, Adieu, my very dear : Adieu, my lady, Adieu, my
little clown : Adieu, Archers, Captain, Comrades : Adieu, Page ; Adieu,
lads and lasses ; Adieu, good folk and he and she who nourished me when I
was at the wars : Adieu, all goodly Cities and Castles ; Quarter-Masters,
Adieu, my quarters are in the ground.
Adieu, above all, noble realm of France, Adieu, I commend to you the
poor land of Scotland : it is fitting that I leave my body when I pass and
thus have neither sickness, wound or stroke, taking no burden with me :
Therefore I pray you that a fair writing, plain to be seen, beyond my
grave, upon a wall (be placed) ; write this, my epitaph.
\
The Epitaph
The arrow of death which kills every man, to which in life he only once
does homage, and must pay tribute to Dame Nature in stripping all his
gear and bravery, has laid low — 'tis a sorry case ! — a Scot of gentle birth,
whose likeness here by candlelight is seen : pray all to God, that He take
pity on his soul.
198 Le Testament du Gentil Cossoys
Fair, pleasant, charming likeness ! he was tall and slim ; I tell you that
it shows him to the very life ! You'd scarce believe how faithfully he kept
the way and not a soul could pass ; above all Scots he knew how it was
done ; pray all to God that He take pity on his soul.
In life he did no creature harm that walks the fields, save, to live, cockerel
or fowl which his page had taken. Of the King's bodyguard, and young in
years he was ; faithful, he was to God and to Our Lady. His heritage is
seven feet of earth — pray all to God that He take pity on his soul.
Prince, John of Scotland, remains a hostage : see that the worms all
his body spoil : That he may have his own inheritance, pray all to God
that He take pity on his soul.1
DAVID BAIRD SMITH.
1 The foregoing translation can only be treated as an approximate rendering of
the very corrupt text of the original.
Constitutional Growth of Carlisle Cathedral
whirligig of time brought about curious changes in
A Carlisle at the opening of the twelfth century. William
Rufus had come north in 1092, drove out Dolfin, the local ruler,
and annexed the city and surrounding country to the English
kingdom. The work of colonization according to Norman ideas
was begun by the Red King and carried on by his brother Henry
I. Very early in Henry's reign, perhaps in 1102, a colony of
canons was settled in Carlisle, the capital of the new district,
with the ultimate intention, no doubt, of founding an episcopal
see to be the spiritual centre of the annexed province. It was a
college of canons, of what description we know not, that was first
planted in Carlisle, from which it would appear that an episcopal
chapter was contemplated at no distant date. The trend of
ecclesiastical opinion in England had set in against monastic
chapters, and there was little likelihood that the work of recon-
struction at Carlisle should be impeded by recourse to a dis-
credited institution.1 At all events, it was a body of canons, not
monks, that was established in the city. In 1133 the see of
Carlisle was founded, and the first bishop turned the collegiate
church into his cathedral chapter, either by expelling the existing
canons or more probably by obliging them to accept the rule of
the canons regular of St. Augustine. The see of Carlisle was the
last bishopric founded in England before the Reformation, and it
was the only see with an Augustinian chapter. In many respects
the early vicissitudes of the cathedral are of the greatest interest
in the history of ecclesiastical institutions, but like all great struc-
tures the foundations lie beneath the surface.
1 Palgrave, Rot. Cur. Regif, i. pref. xxij-xxviij. Stokes notes that secular canons
had become hopelessly corrupt, and monastic chapters were introduced by St.
Dunstan and other pious men desirous to see religious work done in a religious
spirit. Two centuries elapsed, and then the bishops grew tired of monastic
chapters. By the close of the twelfth century many of the bishops in England
were engaged in a deadly struggle, striving to banish the monks from their chapters
(Ireland and the Anglo-Norman Church, pp. 270-71).
200 Rev. Canon Wilson, Litt.D.
There was a church in Carlisle on the present site before it was
made collegiate in the beginning of the twelfth century. Some
fragments of early crosses, discovered in the Norman wall of the
cathedral and in the precinct during the restoration of 1855-7, are
evidence enough of a pre-conquest institution.1 Of the character
of the church or of the period to which it belonged little or
nothing is known. Hints of ecclesiastical movement early in the
twelfth century are distinct, though they reach us at a later date.
Henry I. instituted a body of canons and settled them in the
church of St. Mary, Carlisle, the site of which he had previously
appropriated by his charter.2 While this institution lasted, that is
till the introduction of Augustinian canons on the foundation of the
bishopric in 1133, it would appear that the canons were living in
association without organisation. References to the new body are
abundant, but there is no intimation of head, rank or dignity
among them. As the canons of Carlisle they are always spoken
of. No doubt the seed was sown according to Norman custom
at this date, and it was left to germinate and grow as ecclesiastical
needs demanded. It would appear that the institution was, so to
speak, democratic, and did not take its name, like a priory, from
its head, but from the general body. There were canons of
Carlisle, but no priory of Carlisle, till the middle of the century.
The instance at Carlisle, moreover, is not singular. When
Henry I. in 1109 confirmed Queen Maud's establishment of
canons regular in Christchurch, London, he called it a canonicatum*
not a prioratum, as if the effective title of prior had not yet
appeared. Some ten years later or more the same designation
was applied to a similar institution founded in the church of St.
Mary, Southwark, about 1115-1125, though the prior, as well
as the canons, is distinctly alluded to in the charter of founda-
tion.4 At this early period of Norman foundations headship was
only in potential existence ; the body was of more importance ;
the head was only primus inter pares, a status in the ecclesiastical
body which the prior of a college of canons regular never lost.
It was long before an Augustinian prior took or received the tide
of prelates, which involved superiority over his fellow-canons.
But as the institution was capable of growth the canonicatus
1 These cross fragments are illustrate^ in Calverley, Early Crosses in dio. of
Carlisle (ed. Collingwood), p. 95.
2 Assize Roll (Cumberland), no. I32,m. 32 ; Scotichronicon (ed. Goodall), i. 289.
3 Ancient Charters (Pipe Roll Soc. vol. x.), p. 3 ; Dugdale, Men. vj. 155, note 4.
4 Cal. of Chart, v. 34.
Carlisle Cathedral 20I
became the prioratus, and first the prior and then the prelate1
appeared in association with the canons.
It would seem that when Henry I. had settled his collegiate
body in Carlisle he had the intention of taking a slice from the
vast archdeaconry of Richmond,2 and of making the new province
an episcopal see with the bishop's seat in that city. Political
necessity, however, intervened, and the new district, which had
been added to the English kingdom in 1092, was committed to
the custody of a great vassal who ruled ' the land of Carlisle ' for
twenty years. During the vice-gerency the ecclesiastical founda-
tion in the city languished, but on the king's resumption of govern-
ment about 1 121 we have notices of its revival. Between this
date and 1130 the canons of Carlisle were busy with their build-
ings,3 and endowments were accumulating of the gift of the king
and his subjects. During this decade six churches in Northum-
berland and as many in Cumberland were bestowed upon them,
in addition to manors and parcels of land.4 It is not always
recognised that much of the endowments of the Church of
Carlisle was given to the canons before the foundation of the
see. But as yet there is no indication of internal organisation
and no mention of a ruling superior.
The chroniclers5 agree that the bishopric was founded by the
king in 1133, and that Adelulf, his confessor, who was prior of
1 Before Adelulf, prior of Nostell, was consecrated bishop of Carlisle, he
witnessed a deed at Nostell as ' Adwaldo prelato,' but in other deeds he is described
as 'A. prioris de sancto Osuualdo ' (Cotton MS., Vespasian, E. xix. ff. 32, 112,
Register of Nostell). In the customs and observances of the Augustinian priory
of Barnwell, Cambridgeshire, the chief officer of the house, usually called prior or
abbot, is termed prelate (prelatus). This word, says J. W. Clark, the editor, does
not imply episcopal dignity, but merely the canon who has been preferred 'the
father of the monastery,' or who 'has mounted to the highest point of honour'
(Observances of Barnwell, pp. xxxiv, 37, 43). In the same customs he is also called
presbyter.
2 For a fuller account, with the authorities, see my narrative in the Viet. Hist, of
Cumberland, ii. 7-12, 131.
zPipe Roll of Henry /., ed. Hunter, p. 141.
4 The deeds of gift will be found by inspeximus on the various charter and
patent rolls. There is in the Registry of Carlisle a fine original charter of 6
Edward III., which repeats most of them. It is a veritable chartulary of the
Church of Carlisle.
^Annales Monastic!, ii. 223; M. Paris, Hist. AngL, i. 245-6 ; Chron. Majora, ii.
158; Earth, de Cotton, Hist. AngL, pp. 62, 417. Some ancient and many
modern writers have jumbled up two distinct events, viz. the foundation of the
house of canons in 1102 and the introduction of the canons regular in 1133.
See V.C.H. Cumb., i. 7-8.
202 Rev. Canon Wilson, Litt.D.
Nostell, an Augustinian house in Yorkshire, was nominated by
him as the first bishop. It was Bishop Adelulf who organised
the church of Carlisle by the introduction of Augustinian canons
and by making them his cathedral chapter. It was a wise policy
for a first bishop in a new province to constitute a chapter which
he could control and in which he was the predominant partner.
The bishop and canons composed the cathedral body as a single
corporation and had a common maintenance. There is no
indubitable reference to a prior of Carlisle till late in the episco-
pate of the first bishop.1 Till almost the end of his life, Adelulf
retained the priorate of Nostell with the bishopric of Carlisle, but
when he made provision for his retirement from the Yorkshire
house it is significant that about the same time the name of a prior
of Carlisle appears in the local records. A tradition, which reaches
back to the fourteenth century, is insistent that Adelulf was prior
of Carlisle at the time of his consecration in 1133 as he was
certainly prior of Nostell. The probability of a double priorate
is scarcely trustworthy. But, whether the tradition be true or
not, the bishop resided in the cathedral, and was head of the
establishment of Augustinian canons of Carlisle. The name of
anyone using the title of prior of Carlisle does not appear till
1 1 50, a few years before the old prelate's death, when he was
resigning the priorate of Nostell. His body was buried in
Carlisle in a new cloister he had built there.2
Reminiscences of Bishop Adelulf s position among the canons
have survived to this day. The bishop's throne in the cathedral
symbolises his episcopal jurisdiction in the diocese; his stall on the
south side of the choir betokens his jurisdiction in the cathedral
church, and his capitular seat in the chapter house indicates his right
to sit in capitular deliberations. The bishop is the supreme ruler
in church, chapter and diocese. During Bishop Adelulf s life there
1 So far as we have found the first contemporary reference to Prior Walter is in
the foundation charter of the monastery of Holmcultram (Chartulary, MS. f. 221),
which was founded, according to the Chronicle of Melrose (Bann. Club), p. 74, in
1150. Dr. Prescott has printed a good copy of this deed (Reg. of Wetherhal, p.
421-2). The same prior witnessed the foundation charter of the Augustinian
priory of Lanercost ascribed to 1169 (ibid. pp. 419-21).
2 For a more extended account see the writer's Rose Castle (Thurnam & Sons,
Carlisle), pp. 2-5. In royal charters between 1120 and 1133 Adelulf is always
designated as prior of Nostell, but never as prior of Carlisle. After 1133 he
witnesses charters as bishop of Carlisle. See the chronological arrangement of the
charters of Henry I. by Dr. William Farrer in English Hist. Review, xxxiv. 523,
527> 538, 571-
Carlisle Cathedral 203
was no need of a prior, and no name of a prior appears until the
eve of his retirement. During his effective episcopate the
organisation of the diocese was complete. The archdeacon of
Carlisle, whose jurisdiction was conterminous with that of the
bishop, was a member of the cathedral chapter,1 and the diocese
was apportioned into decanal areas. No vestige of any other
ecclesiastical office has been found during the first episcopate.
After the death of Bishop Adelulf in 1 157 there was a vacancy
of nearly half-a-century in the succession, when the diocese was
administered by the archdeacon of Carlisle with the local title of
diocesan,2 a neighbouring bishop, Christian of Whithern,3 having
been occasionally requisitioned for pontifical functions. An
ineffectual attempt to fill the see was made in 1 186 by Henry II.
while he was in Carlisle. On the petition of the canons regular
of the metropolitan church of St. Mary of Carlisle, relates the
chronicler, the king yielded to them a free election to choose a
bishop for themselves. With the common consent of the
brethren and with the help of God, Paulinus of Leeds, master of
the hospital of St. Leonard, York, was elected to the see of
Carlisle. The election pleased the king and everybody in the
bishopric. There was general rejoicing in the city and whole
diocese, for the see had been vacant and destitute of episcopal
supervision since the death of Bishop Adelulf in 1157. Paulinus
of Leeds, however, was unwilling to accept the bishopric, though
the king urged him to it by the offer of a considerable pension.4
1 Whitby Chartulary (Surtees Soc.), i. 38. Bishop Adelulf issued a charter to
* Elyae archidiacono et capitulo S. Mariae et omnibus parochianis suis,' by which a
church in Westmorland was confirmed to the monks of Whitby. There was
evidently no prior at this date, and it is clear that the archdeacon had a stall
in the cathedral and came next in order and dignity to the bishop.
2 In 1190 Clement III. in a bull to the monks of Holmcultram alludes to the
archdeacon as ' Roberto, archidiacono, tune temporis dyocesano, vacante episco-
patu ' (Reg. of Holmcultram, MS. f. 240). In a charter by the same archdeacon
he speaks of an act made ' apud Karliolum in presentia mea et clericorum meorum
et canonicorum sancte Marie Karlioli et aliorum multorum litteratorum et
laicorum ' (ibid. f. 36).
3 In 1159 the bishop of Candida Casa received xiiijs. viijd. from the sheriff of
Cumberland, and the same amount in 1160 (Pipe Rolls ofCumb. ed. Hinde, p. 3).
Christian died at Holmcultram in 1186 (Chron, de Mai/rot, Bann. Club, p. 95), at
which time the diocese was in a derelict state.
4 Benedictus Abbas (Gesta Regis, i. 349) says that free election was conceded to
the canons by the king on their petition (ad petitionem canonicorum), but Hoveden
(CAronica, ii. 309) says that the king caused (fecit} Paulinus de Ledes to be elected
to the bishopric, which he refused, though the king offered to endow that see with
rents to the value of thirty marks.
204 Rev. Canon Wilson, Litt.D.
Urgency there undoubtedly was ; the diocese was in a desperate
plight in 1 1 86 ; it had neither bishop nor archdeacon. The king
held bishopric and archdeaconry in his own hand till the appoint-
ment of an archdeacon in H9O.1 But there was no bishop of
Carlisle till King John induced Bernard, the fugitive archbishop
of Ragusa, to accept the long-vacant throne.
While the see was vacant (i 157-1204) two ecclesiastical officers
came into prominence, the archdeacon and prior of Carlisle, the
former as chief administrator of the diocese and the latter as head
of the diocesan chapter. There is no doubt about the constitu-
tional position of Archdeacon Elyas as a member of the capitular
body during Bishop AdelulPs life. But the position of Arch-
deacon Robert and his immediate successors is not so certain.
It was inevitable that the constitutional growth of the prior in the
convent during the long vacancy of the see should cause friction
if the archdeacon remained a member of that body. When the
financial affairs2 of Archdeacon Robert became hopeless in 1186,
and he was obliged to retire crippled with debt, the issues of the
archdeaconry and bishopric, so far as they were independent of
the prior and canons, escheated to the Crown. In the render of
the sheriff for two years in 1188 it is seen that the greater part
of the outlay was spent on the cathedral. Whether the arch-
deacon was reckoned a member of the priory at this date, it is
indubitable that the priory church was the heart of the diocese.
From this period onwards there is no suggestion that succeeding
archdeacons were canons of Carlisle, though each of them had a
stall in the cathedral to which they were inducted by the bishop's
mandate.3 Constitutional connexion with the cathedral is indis-
pensable for an archdeacon in order that he may be clothed with
jurisdiction. No other officer of the cathedral or diocese, except
1 See my fuller account in Viet. Hist. ofCumb. ii. 19-21.
1 Pipe Rolls ofCumb. pp. 49-50 ; V.C.H. Cumb. ii. 20-21.
•The collated archdeacon was installed in 1621 as ' archidiaconum dicte
ecclesie et diocesis Carliolensis in stallo quodam scituato in choro dicte ecclesie pro
talibus de antique vsitato' (D. and C. Minute Book, MS. v. 806). The arch-
deacon was, therefore, archdeacon of the cathedral as well as of the diocese ; corn-
pare the mandate to induct and install in the cathedral in 1302 (Reg. of J. de
Halton, i. 177, Cant, and York Soc.). The archdeacon's stall is identified on
Browne Willis's ground-plan of the cathedral, on the south side of the choir near
the bishop's throne in 1720 (Survey of Cathedrals, i. 284). The custom of instal-
lation of the archdeacon of Carlisle in a special seat in the choir became super-
fluous when the fourth prebendal stall was annexed to the archdeaconry in
recent years.
Carlisle Cathedral 205
the bishop's official or official of Carlisle l and the rural deans, comes
into view during the twelfth century. The ecclesiastical troubles,
long simmering in Carlisle, reached a climax during Bernard's
episcopate, 1204-1214. After his death the constitutional posi-
tion of the canons was assured. Not only was power given them
to elect the bishop of the diocese, but also the prior of their own
house.
In the infancy of the Augustinian institute in England the
founder of each house claimed the right of appointment to the
chief seat. The custom is observable in many places,2 and it is
most likely that at the outset it existed at Carlisle. No superior,
except the bishop, was needed so long as he resided within the
cathedral precinct and remained an effective instrument of the
institution. There is no precise evidence of the mode of appoint-
ing priors of Carlisle in the latter half of the twelfth century.
The analogy of other Augustinian houses is scarcely applicable to
that of Carlisle, whicjj was also a diocesan chapter. The house of
secular canons was founded by Henry I. in 1 102, but the order
was changed in 1133 by Bishop Adelulf, who introduced Augus-
tinian canons. It is probable, therefore, that it was the bishop
who appointed Prior Walter, a local man and cadet of a noble
house 3 in the district of Carlisle, when his episcopate was drawing
to a close. There is no evidence to show how his successors
were appointed while the see was vacant.
During this period the abnormal condition of the diocese
brought the canons into considerable prominence. There was a
general movement to self-determination. The chaos which pre-
vailed in the North through the disagreements of King John and
1 Thomas de Thorp was official of Carlisle in the last decade of the twelfth
century. (See Reg. ofWetherhal, p. 92.)
2 Richard Engaine, son of the founder of the Augustinian priory of Castle
Hymel in Northamptonshire, gave the canons the power of free election of a prior
(prelatus) without the consent of himself or his successors (Dugdale, Man. vj.
449-50), a privilege which was confirmed by Honorius III. in 1223 (Cal. of Pap.
Lett, i. 92). Ten years later a similar change took place at Cartmel in Lanca-
shire, another Augustinian house, where the custom obtained that the canons
should present two persons to the founder, one of whom he selected with the
approval of the bishop of the diocese. Gregory IX. described the custom as
corrupted, and ordered it to cease (Reg. of Abp. Gray, p. 1 67, Surtees Soc. ; Cat.
of Pap. Lett. i. 135). At the outset the patronage of a religious house was a very
real thing.
3 See my note in The Athenaum, No. 4107, Hth July, 1906, pp. 43'44> where
it is shown that Prior Walter of Carlisle was a son of Dolfin, son of Ailward, who
married Maud, daughter of Earl Gospatric and sister of Waldeve.
206 Rev. Canon Wilson, Litt.D.
his barons, and the gravitation of the allegiance of the canons
from the English to the Scottish king, developed a policy of
ecclesiastical independence in Carlisle which obliged King John to
grant them free election. The see was again vacant, and the
king could have no opposition from the bishop. The first prior,
elected by the canons so far as we have found, was Henry de
Merton, whose election was confirmed by the king in I2I4.1 It
did not matter to the canons whether they dealt with the king or
the bishop in the election of a superior of their house ; the
important principle was that he should be of their own choice.
Circumstances intervened which postponed papal confirmation of
their inherent power till 1248.
It was at this period, after the death of the second bishop in
the succession, that the canons attained to a constitutional position
in the diocese. Not only did they succeed in obtaining the right
of election of their own superior, but they were also charged
with the election of the bishop of the diocese. The first two
bishops were nominated by the king ; all the subsequent bishops
till the ecclesiastical changes in the sixteenth century were elected
by the prior and canons, except in a few instances when they were
arbitrarily provided by the Pope. Bishop Hugh,2 1219-1223,
was the first bishop of capitular election. In recognising the
free election of the canons, Honorius III. stipulated8 that there-
after no one should be appointed to the see of Carlisle surrep-
titiously or by violence but he whom the brethren of that church
by common consent, or the sounder part of them, should elect.
While the priory of Carlisle lasted, it was the custom to send
two or more canons to announce to the King the death of the
bishop and at the same time to petition his licence for the election
of a successor. When the election was made, the new bishop,
if canonically elected, was accepted and did homage. The
election of a prior was attended with the same external observances
in relation to the bishop as that of the bishop was with respect
to the Crown.
The constitutional position of the canons in the diocese was
conceded after a great upheaval. The long vacancy of the see,
when the canons were their own masters, had for them disastrous
consequences. It is not quite certain whether Bishop Bernard
1 Rat. Lift. Claui. (Rec. Com.), i. 207^, 211, ^\\b ; Chronicon de Lanercost
(Maitland Club), p. 14.
2 Patent Rolls, 1216-25, pp. 164, 376, 408. 8 CaL of Pap. Lett., vij. 565.
Carlisle Cathedral 207
took up the hegemonic place of his predecessor in the cathedral
precinct. It is probable that he did not. At all events, he had
reluctance in accepting the see in 1 204, as Paulinus of Leeds had
no reluctance in refusing it in 1186. The King, however, over-
came his scruples and granted him a pension out of the exchequer
for his maintenance.1 The canons were restless and politically
dangerous during the internal troubles of the kingdom. Their
loyalty was of great importance to the English king owing to the
geographical position of the priory of Carlisle. Political feeling
in the neighbourhood ran on the baronial side, and the King of
Scotland was invited to Carlisle. When the city and castles of
the county were surrendered to him, the canons not only received
King Alexander to communion, though he was in a state of papal
excommunication, but they elected a Scotsman to fill the see
rendered vacant by the death of Bishop Bernard. The act of
treason brought a doom on the priory. On the complaint of
King John and the bishops to Rome, the papal legate was
instructed to take extreme measures for the punishment of the
offenders. The canons were forthwith expelled from Carlisle
in 1218, and placed in regular churches ; their election of a bishop
was declared void ; and other Augustinian canons, faithful to
the English king, were appointed in their place. It was to the
new body of canons that right of episcopal election was granted
and immediately exercised in the same year by the election of
Hugh, abbot of the Augustinian house of Beaulieu in Hampshire,
whose election was confirmed by the Crown.2
Amidst the chaos which the baronial troubles produced in
Carlisle, a radical change was brought about in the relations of
the bishop to the cathedral body. There were many contributory
causes to prepare the way for it. The long vacancy in the
bishopric led to the rise of the prior, a new force which tended
to weaken the tie between the bishop and his chapter. The
priory had a head of its own who must have been strongly tempted
to set himself up as a rival to the bishop, if such existed, or to
go his own way during an avoidance of the see. The bishop of
Carlisle was gradually ousted from the immediate headship of
the canons and their revenues. The tendency of the times cul-
minated in the unfortunate treason of which mention has been
1 Rot. Lift. Claus, i. djb. For the whole circumstances see V. C. H. Cum&.,
n. 21-2.
2 Most of the authorities are given in V. C. H. Curnb., ii. 23.
ao8 Rev. Canon Wilson, Litt.D.
made. Attention was directed to the poverty1 of the see, and the
difficulty of finding a pastor to undertake it. The old corporation
of bishop and canons, known as the church of Carlisle, was
dissolved ; the endowments of the church were divided, after a
long process of adjudication, between the new canons and the
bishop.8 The chapter under this arrangement became a distinct
corporation with a local head distinct from the bishop, who ceased
to be a lodger in the cathedral precinct, sharing the commons of
his subordinates. The ordinary jurisdiction of the bishop over
the chapter and cathedral was left undisturbed, but the apportion-
ment of the endowments of the church was radical and complete.
It was arranged, however, that the bishop could not alienate any
property of the see without the chapter's sanction,3 a restriction
on the bishop which has survived through the centuries, and is
in force at the present time. The chapter became to some extent
an isolated authority, which could only be made amenable to the
bishop, not personally as an immediate ruler, but by visitation as
an external power. The church of Carlisle, composed of bishop
and canons, like the king and parliament 4 in modern civil life,
1 The king wrote to the pope in 1217 that while the canons themselves ' in
multis habundent, episcopus eorum ita hactenus egestate afflictus est et inopia,
quod vix habet ubi capud suum reclinet, et non invenitur aliquis, qui in aliquo
nobis utilis esse poterit aut necessarius, qui episcopatum ilium recipere voluerit '
(Patent Rolls, 1216-25, p. in).
2 On the division of the church endowments, compare my narrative with
references in V. C. H, Cumb., ii. 22-4, and notably the two deeds of apportionment
printed on pp. 124-6.
8 This was in 1248, in one of the last awards of the adjudicators, as the papal
bull may be described. In it the pope granted to the prior and convent the right
of electing the prior ; and prohibition to the bishop to depose of his (wrongly
translated their) possessions without their consent (Cal. of Pap. Lett., i. 250).
Confirmation of the bishop's acts by the prior and convent, and afterwards by
the dean and chapter, their successors, so far as they touched the leasing or
alienation of the property of the see, is well known. The custom has been
observed in all the centuries since 1248. As the episcopal estates have been
transferred to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the practice is now mainly confined
to patent offices, like those of the chancellor and registrar of the diocese, when
conferred for the life of the holder. For the rules of the common law on the
confirmation of bishop's leases, and the leases of other corporations sole, see the
law books, e.g. Gibson, Codex (ed. 1713), pp. 781-2 ; and for the grant of an
office by a bishop, see Burn-Phillimore. Eccles. Law (ninth ed.) ii. 376-81.
4 The state of things in Carlisle was much the same as it was elsewhere.
Bishops and chapters were falling away from each other by the loosening of old
ties. It was the same spirit which brought about the independence of boroughs
from their temporal or spiritual lords (Freeman, Cath. Church of Wells, pp. 61-4).
Carlisle Cathedral 209
was to exist no longer as a single corporation. Two authorities
were created in intermutual relation, and the administration of the
affairs of the diocese was divided between them.
There is no mention of dignitaries among the canons, except
the prior, till the great division of the church of Carlisle into two
authorities. No doubt some sort of organization existed among
them in the abnormal condition of the chapter and diocese,
but such organization has not been revealed. It is true that
William, dean of the canons,1 was an important personage in
1 1 86-8, but there is some doubt about the nature of his office.
In another record he is described as dean of Carlisle, a man of
private fortune, with the will and the power to bestow endow-
ments on the priory.2 As the office of dean is not found again
in respect of the cathedral during the mediaeval period, it may be
assumed that it was in his capacity of what was afterwards called
rural dean3 that he was referred to. Territorial deaneries had
not at this date become altogether fixed either in area or number.
It is possible that the canons had a dean of their own, or were
reckoned as an integral portion of diocesan movement in the
twelfth century, and as deans existed in connection with towns
as well as rural districts, the dean of Carlisle would be viewed
in a public record as having in his oversight the canons of the
cathedral church. It is at all events in the final award of the
division of the church property between the bishop and canons
in 1249 that special officers in the priory first appear.
It has been already suggested that the bishop, as the immediate
head of the canons of his cathedral, was the patron of the offices
needful for their internal development. It was he, as we have
alleged, who appointed the first prior. The reservations of the
great award in 1249 seem to make these assumptions conclusive.
Throughout the dispute between the bishop and canons, the
patronage of the obedientiaries in the priory was one of the issues.
Was it the bishop, or the prior, or the canons who would appoint
1 Pipe Rolls of Cumberland (ed. Hinde), p. 50.
2Dugdale, Monasticon, vj. 144.
3 This explanation is not quite satisfactory, but it is the best that can be offered
at the moment. The decanut is sometimes found as an officer in connection with
some early Augustinian institutions, e.g. at Nostell (Chartulary, MS. f. 19).
The description of the office at Carlisle may be another designation of the
prepositus canonuorum at Lincoln, from whom the canons received their portion
of the communa in the chapter house (Lincoln Cath. Stat., i. 275, 284). But the
provost at Lincoln seems to have been an inferior officer, whereas William, dean
of Carlisle, was an important personage.
210 Rev. Canon Wilson, Litt.D.
the dignitaries in the priory under the new condition of things ?
The adjudicators defined the bishop's power in future appoint-
ments. As often as a sub-prior or cellarer in the priory of
Carlisle, so the award l runs, is to be appointed, the prior and
convent shall elect two or three persons fit for the office, whom
they shall present to the lord bishop, if he be in the diocese, but
if not, he shall commit his turn in that respect to some other
person within a month after the election was brought to his notice,
so that the office be not vacant by his neglect beyond the pre-
scribed period, and it shall be at the bishop's option to admit one
de illis tribus electis and to give his assent to the same. The
strong hold given to the bishop over the internal affairs of the
canons was reminiscent of his traditional pre-eminence among
them. The offices of sub-prior and cellarer, two of the most
important of the cathedral dignitaries under the prior's rule, were
practically in the bishop's patronage. The award was not suffered
to be a dead letter. Again and again the bishop exercised * his
right of selection in the history of the priory, and the canons
were not slow in keeping him to the terms of the original
agreement.
The names of other offices for the internal administration of
the priory are slow to come above the surface, and when they
appear it is quite certain they had been long in use. When
Ralf de Ireton, prior of Gisburne, was elected to the see of
Carlisle in 1279, the prior, precentor, succentor, cellarer and
sacristan were the nominees of the convent for the purpose of
an election 3 ; no doubt these were the principal dignitaries of
1 The full text of this award was first printed by me in the Viet. Hist, of
Cumberland, ii. 126, from Charter Roll, 18 Edw. i. No. 26, on which it is
recorded by inspeximus. The document has since been translated into English
under the direction of the Master of the Rolls (Cal. of Chart, ii. 365).
2 Bishop Ross exercised it in 1331 while residing at Melbourne in Derbyshire,
by issuing a commission to select one of two fit persons for the office of
cellarer, and Bishop Kirkby did likewise in 1339 when sojourning at Horncastle
in case of the sub-priorate. In the former instance, the canons wished to impress
the bishop with a sense of their magnanimity by pretending to confer a favour
upon him, but in reality it was no favour at all, as they were obliged by the award-
of 1249 to do what was done (Carl. Epis. Reg. Ross, MS. f. 265 ; Ibid. Kirkby,
MS. f. 390). In 1379 Prior John de Penreth removed the cellarer from his office
without the consent maioris et sanioris partis capituli sui, but when the cause was
submitted to the bishop, the deposed cellarer was reinstated (Ibid. Appleby, MS.
ff. 3 19-20). See a fuller statement of the tenure of these offices in V. C. H. Cttmb.,
ii. 132-3.
3 Cal. of Tap. Lett., i. 461.
Carlisle Cathedral 2 1 1
the establishment. In the enumeration of" the canons, made in
obedience to the bishop's mandate,1 for the purpose of his visitation
in 1366, only the offices of prior and sub-prior are given ; the
offices of the rest of the convent are not mentioned. As the
precentor was indispensable to the work of the church, his office
must have arisen at an early date. In dignity he ranked next
to the sub-prior. One of the precentors of Carlisle, Alan de
Frysington, attained to special distinction in 1291, when the
convent made a report to Edward I. on the English claim to
the sovereignty of Scotland. The document,2 called the 'Cronica
de Karleolo,' was presented to the king by the above-named
dignitary. If it was drawn up by him, as probably it was, the
precentor was well acquainted with the contents of his library
at Carlisle, which, from the evidence of the writing, was well
supplied with copies of the ancient chronicles, legendary and
historical, the identification of which, from his quotations, is a
comparatively easy task. The mention of the office of succentor
at Carlisle is very rare,8 but that of sacrist became traditional,
to which was annexed the pastoral charge of the church of St. Mary,
which occupied the nave of the cathedral from time immemorial.
The chancellor, cancellarius in scolis regendls^ has not been found
as an officer of the cathedral, owing, no doubt, to its Augustinian
constitution. A school existed in Carlisle as an adjunct of the
priory, perhaps from its foundation, certainly from the middle
of the twelfth century.4 A canon with the title of maghter
scolarum 5 was schoolmaster in 1264, but several succeeding school-
masters were not canons ; some of them were laymen.8 Another
!Carl Epis Reg., Appleby, MS. f. 165.
Chapter House (Scots Doc.), Box 100, No. 168. The document consists of a
single sheet of vellum, illegible in parts from ill-usage, and has been printed by
Palgrave, Documents and Records (Rec. Com.), pp. 68-76. It was transmitted
' per latorem presencium dominum Alanum de Frysington concanonicum nostrum
et precentorem ecclesie nostre beate Marie, Karlioli.' The precentor was after-
yards sent in pastoral charge of outlying parishes appropriated to the priory.
3 This officer was called 'the sub-chanter' at the time of the surrender of the
priory in i 540, as the precentor was known as the 'chief chanter of the monastery'
(Letters and Papers of Henry Vll) '., 1540, pp. 301, 305).
*Pipe Rolls of Cumberland (ed. Hinde), p, 50.
*Chartulary ofWh'itby (Surtees Soc.), i. 289.
8 Master Nicholas de Surreton, rector scolarum Karlioli, was successively admitted
holy orders, 1316-19, ad titulum probitatis (Reg. of John de Halton, ii. 136, 139,
191, Cant, and York Soc.). The will of John de Burdon, magister scolarum
Karlioli, in which he speaks of his late wife Christiana, has been recorded ; the
212 Rev. Canon Wilson, Litt.D.
designation of the office was rector scolarum, to which the holder
was licensed by the bishop of the diocese. The duties of the
office, which was held only during pleasure, were set out in the
licence,1 viz., to teach grown-up boys and all willing to be taught
in the knowledge of grammar and such matters. The title of
the institution was the Grammar School of Carlisle. The school
underwent many vicissitudes during the centuries, and gradually
drifted away as a separate institution, but under cathedral patron-
age. The office of chancellor, which combined the functions of
official principal and vicar-general, is a creature of the Reformation,
and first appears in connection, not of the cathedral, but of the
diocese,2 when it was convulsed in 1536 by the destruction of
the monastic houses. The title or office never had a necessary
relation to the cathedral, except that the consistory court was
held in St. Mary's church, which occupied tbe cathedral nave,3
from which it was transferred, in 1670, to the north transept of
the cathedral itself, where it still remains.
The Augustinian chapter was shorn of half its influence by the
apportionment of the endowments of the church of Carlisle
between the canons and the bishop. A striking feature of these
early endowments is that they consisted largely of parish churches,
which were wholly or almost wholly appropriated to the canons.
As Bishop Hugh, 1219-23, was instrumental in carrying out the
division, the Augustinian author of the Chronicle of Lanercost most
will was proved in 1371 (Testamenta Karleolensla, ed. Ferguson, p, 101). In the
will he makes a bequest of omnes libros meos to a friend, and constitutes a canon as
one of his executors.
1 See, for example, a copy of the schoolmaster's licence in Carl. Epis. Reg.
Welton, MS. f. 103, for the date 1362. In the previous year a master was
licensed to the school of Penrith, where he was obliged to give instruction super
psalteriis, donato et cantu (Ibid. f. 81).
2 Letters and Papers of Henry VII]., xij. (i), 226-7. For the chancellor as
vicarius episcopi, see the projected legislation of Henry VIIJ. in Reformatio Legum,
p. 202.
3 Before the destruction of the nave during the Cromwellian wars, it was a large
area, more than ample for the parish church of St. Mary during the mediaeval
period. It was then the home of several chantry chapels, altars for obits, sites
for the burial of notabilities, and so forth. When the destroyed portion of the
cathedral was renovated after the Restoration of 1660, the consistory court was
removed to a more convenient place at the bishop's request, that more space might
be left for the parish church. The style of the consistory Court in the records,
1606-1608, tells that it was held 'in ecclesia beate Marie virginis, civitatis
Carleolensis (loco consistoriali ibidem'). This style was resumed after the
Restoration, and continued till the court, held on 2ist Oct., 1670, when it was
changed to ' in ecclesia cathedrali sancte et individue Trinitatis, Carlioli.'
Carlisle Cathedral 213
ungraciously described him as the bishop who odiously dispersed
the old convent, and by a fraudulent division took away half of
the possessions of the canons.1 Before the awards of the adjudi-
cators, the influence of the canons on the work of the diocese
must have been immense. But it was an Augustinian influence ;
there was little scope for the employment of secular clergy. All
ecclesiastical patronage was exercised by the canons, who appointed
the members of their own society to pastoral charges. The
patronage was now divided ; the bishop got a good share.
Though many of the successive bishops had been priors or canons
of the house before consecration, it came to be recognized that
the seculars were under his special protection. The two authorities
drifted further and further apart till they are seen moving on
parallel lines in their bestowal of ecclesiastical patronage. It may be
taken that the bulk of the priory churches were served by canons,
and those churches in the patronage of the bishop by seculars.
From some churches the canons were recalled after a period
of service, and were replaced by others. The priory was in
constant touch with the most distant parishes. So close was the
connexion that the prior was reckoned to be the incumbent of
a church totally appropriate to his house, and the canons, resident
in the parishes, were his stipendiary curates, who were not
instituted, and remained in the stipendiary status.2 No record
of the admission of these curates or chaplains was made in the
diocesan archives. In fact, in later centuries, a tombstone could
not be placed in the churchyard of one of these parishes, or a
parish clerk appointed, without the formal sanction of the canons.
There were, therefore, resident and non-resident canons of Carlisle,
the former responsible for the daily services and administration
of the revenues, and the latter in pastoral charge of the appropriate
parishes. This distinction, often forgotten, is fully recognised in
ecclesiastical nomenclature. The cathedral body resident at home
was known as the prior and chapter, but the complete assembly
of the canons, resident and non-resident, was always described
as the prior and convent. It was the general body that elected the
1 Chron. de Lanercost (Maitland Club), p. 30.
2 An enumeration of the spiritual possessions of the priory was submitted to the
bishop at his primary visitation, with the title-deeds of the holders of ecclesiastical
preferment, on the inspection of which, if they were found correct, the parties
received letters of dimission confirming them in possession. In the fourteenth
century we have full descriptions of the ecclesiastical status of the various priory
churches in two letters of dimission issued by Bishops Kirkby and Welton
(Registers, MS. ff. i. 382, ii. 19). See a fuller account by me in V. C. H. Cumb.,\\. 136.
P
214 Rev. Canon Wilson, Litt.D.
prior and made presentations to benefices not wholly appropriate.
To episcopal visitations of the priory, that is, prior and chapter, the
pastoral canons were not summoned, but if a canon was otherwise
absent for a lawful purpose, like study at an University, he was
preconized and his non-appearance was excused. There was no
need for the visitation of the prior and convent, for the pastoral
canons came within scope of the visitations of the diocese. The
bishop's visitation was always made to the prior and chapter.1
In the Augustinian body at Carlisle we have no evidence of a
rule laid down for the appointment of novices or candidates for
the profession of canons. The acceptance of candidates was
probably the duty of the prior in consultation with the daily
chapter, but, of course, the bishop was ultimately the determining
factor in the making of a canon. The priory was a missionary
or theological seminary for the preparation of likely men for holy
orders ; admission was only given for that purpose. The novice
served a year's probation, and after instruction, if he was found
suitable, he was presented for ordination to the bishop, who had
necessarily the last word. After ordination he made canonical
profession in a prescribed form 2 as directed by the Order. The
number of the canons kept at the cathedral varied according to the
political and economic condition of the country. The normal aim
was that the chapter should consist of a prior and twelve canons,3
which was the ideal of the Cistercian institute,4 in imitation
of the sacred model. The pastoral canons far exceeded in
1N6 narrower reference can be given in support of the statement in this
paragraph than the two volumes of ancient registers of the bishops of Carlisle,
1292-1386, now in the diocesan registry of Carlisle, the earlier portion of the
first volume of which has been printed by the Canterbury and York Society, viz.
the register of Bishop John de Halton, 1292-1324.
2 For the admission of novices, their clothing, instruction, and subsequent
profession, see the Customs of 'Barnwell (ed. J. W. Clark), pp. 120-136. The
actual form in fratnbus suscipiendis in use at Holyrood, with the canons of which
those in Carlisle were in confederation, has been preserved (Holyrood Ordinale,
ed. Eeles, pp. 2-3). For the various customs on the Continent, compare Martene,
De Antiquit Monach, Rit., lib. v. cap. 1-4, with the customs of the canons regular
in De Antlquii Eccles. Ritibus, ii. 179-80.
3 The number of canons at the cathedral as returned by the prior to the bishop
on his visitation of the chapter in 1366 was a prior and twelve canons, one of
whom was absent for the sake of study ' et non est premunitus ex causa ' (Carl.
Epis. Reg., Appleby, MS. f. 165). In 1379 the prior and eleven canons were
assessed to the malum subsidium : the prior's benefice was valued at cc //. a year and
assessed to the subsidy at iiij K. ; each of the canons was assessed at iijs. iiijd.
(P.R.O. Clerical Subsidies, Dio. Carlisle, 6T°).
4 Cistercian Statutes (ed. Fowler), pp. 20, 27.
Carlisle Cathedral 215
number those at home.1 It was a principle among them that
a non-resident canon should not live alone, for ' woe to him that
is alone when he falleth, and hath not another to lift him up.'
To large parishes, not wholly appropriate, two or three canons
were sent in association, one of whom was presented to the bishop
for institution. During the troubled period of Scottish warfare,
the canons at home and abroad carried on their sacred work with
great hardship and difficulty. The number dwindled owing to
lack of sustenance, and sometimes resident canons were sent to
other Augustinian houses in more favoured situations till the
political horizon cleared.2
Though no records of the customs or observances for the
regulation of the priory of Carlisle have survived, there can be
no manner of doubt that the canons lived in association and were
maintained out of the common fund. A canon of Carlisle had
not a separate house ; he had no distinct prebend or separate
portion. ' The prior had his own lodging (camera), but the canons
resident in the priory deliberated daily in the chapter-house ;
sang the hours in the church ; studied or exercised in the cloister ;
dined in the refectory ; slept in the dormitory ; and when sick,
were sent to the infirmary, all of which were situated within the
precinct.3 Common life and common maintenance was the rule
at Carlisle, according to the original constitution throughout the
existence of the Augustinian institute, except for a short period
before the end, when the daily liberations to the canons were
reckoned a sort of prebenda.4 When a prior retired in 5304, a
1 In 1438 the number of non-resident canons was twenty, according to the
representation made by the priory to the King, when the Border was particularly
lively (Cal. of Pat. Rolls, 1436-41, p. 185).
2 In 1316, when the destroying hand lay heavily on the priory and its possessions,
Edward II. sent writs to six distant Augustinian houses that each should receive
one of the canons of Carlisle, to be nominated by the prior's letters patent, and
maintain him as one of their own canons until the priory of Carlisle was relieved
of its distress (Cal. of Close Rolls, 1313-18, p. 426).
3 Work was carried on at the dormitory of the canons (in operatione dormitorii
canonicorum) in 1187, when the large sum of xxij //'. xixs. ijd. was spent on it
(Pipe Rolls of Cumb., ed. Hinde, pp. 50-51). In 1226 'certain houses below the
infirmary ' were assigned to the bishop in the great division of the possessions
of the church of Carlisle (Cal. of Pap. Lett., i. 112). The site of the infirmary
is now occupied by the dean's garden, at the lower end of which the bishop has
his registry. The refectory, now called fratry, still flourishes as a library and
place of assembly, and the prior's lodging is now the deanery.
4 In the clerical subsidy of 1379 the canons of Carlisle were rated like the
inmates of other monastic houses in the diocese. The prior was assessed as
216 . Rev. Canon Wilson, Litt.D.
liberal allowance for maintenance was made to him by the canons.
Not only was a new chamber within the precinct assigned for his
use, but the corrodies or liberations of three canons, according
to the custom of the priory, in daily victuals de communi were
at his disposal. By reason of his noble ancestry and the social
status of his friends, additional provision was made, with special
instructions about it to the cellarer of the house, that the retired
prior might be able to live in a style becoming his antecedents
and the reputation of the priory.1 In course of time the daily
maintenance of a canon of Carlisle came to be reckoned as a
prebenda. Thus, in 1430, the Pope granted an indult to one
of the canons to hold a benefice in addition to his f canonry and
prebend ' in the church of Carlisle where he was professed, but
in 1440 a succeeding pope described his status as of ' holding a
canon's portion in the said church.' 2
The evidences show that the creation of two corporations in
the early part of the thirteenth century was not wholly good for
the church of Carlisle. The Augustinian chapter, pursuing its
own objects in isolation from the bishop, gradually departed from
its first estate, and sank almost to the level of a secular foundation.
The cathedral of Carlisle was the bishop's church, served by
Augustinian canons under his visitation. The old theory of
bishop and canons was long dead. At the suppression of the
religious houses, the priory of Carlisle was surrendered to the
officers of Henry VIII., like the monastic centres of the kingdom,
without infringing any of the bishop's rights.3
The canons of the priory were not particularly keen on the
reforming movement, and were slow to adopt the new measures
of liturgical innovation enjoined upon them by parliament. After
the dissolution, the service of Thomas Becket and the usurped
' papa ' of the bishop of Rome were unerased in their choir books,
and all kinds of subterfuge were employed to explain the
possessing the corpus of the house, paying the same amount as the bishop. The
canons paid individually small sums like monks and chaplains. Each monk of
Wetheral was assessed at xx</., and of Holmcultram, i\d. ; while a canon of Carlisle
was assessed at iijs. iiijV., a canon of Lanercost xij</., and a canon of Shap x\d.
Stipendiary curates, chantry priests, and chaplains paid ij/. each ; and incumbents
were assessed according to the value of their benefices (Clerical Subsidies, dio. of
Carlisle, MS. 60-1).
1 Reg. of John de Halton (Cant, and York Soc.), i. 224-6.
1 Cal. of Pap. Lett., ix. 77-8.
'Close Roll, 31 Henry VIII., pt. iv. 210-17 5 Rymer, Foedera (old edition),
xiv. 668. See also Freeman, Cathedral Church of Wells, pp. 62-4.
Carlisle Cathedral 217
error.1 The former institution was superseded by the erection of a
college composed of a dean and four prebendaries, with a number
of subordinates, and endowed with the possessions of the priory,
to which were afterwards added some confiscated endowments
from a neighbouring monastery.2 To this cathedral church of
the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Carlisle, a body of statutes
was delivered in 1545, by which the work of the dean and chapter
of Carlisle is now regulated.8 In refounding the establishment,
the former prior became the first dean, and four of the former
canons were appointed to be the four new prebendaries who made
up the corporation known as the dean and chapter or college
of Carlisle.4 Only three canons retired on pensions,5 and others
of the canons became minor canons,6 of whom there were eight.
This college of a dean and twelve canons, prebendaries and minor
canons, the traditional number at the cathedral, worked the new
ecclesiastical system. Under the statutes, the governing body
of a dean and four prebendaries were allowed to elect from among
themselves only three dignitaries or officers, the vice-dean, receiver
and treasurer, whose tenure was annual. There was, of course,
a considerable entourage of subordinate ministers on the founda-
tion, and of others dependant upon it. Except in the use of the
buildings in the precinct, and in the mode of life entailed by the
institution of separate prebends and houses, things went on much
as they did before. The canons of the old order became the
prebendaries and minor canons of the new. The book of common
prayer in due course took the place of the old service books.
1 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. xv. 301, 305.
2 Patent Roll, 33 Henry VIII. pt. 9, m. 28 ; Letters and Papers, xvj. 393.
3 These statutes have been translated and printed, with many scholarly notes,
by Dr. J. E. Prescott, chancellor of Carlisle. The book is a mine of useful
information on the constitution, customs, and observances of the capitular body.
4 It is curious how long this epithet, ' College of Carlisle,' as descriptive of the
dean and chapter, lingered in common usage. It was very prevalent in the
Elizabethan period, and the phrase is often found till a late date. We have in pos-
session a deed of conveyance of a burgage and tenement in St. Cuthbert's Vennell,
dated i3th January, 1691, which lay against 'the Colledge wall on the north.'
5 Augmentation Book (P.R.O.), vol. ccxxxiv. f. 374^ ; Letters and Papers, xv. 18.
6 No exact information on the first minor canons of the new foundation has
been found, but all the available evidence suggests that the new dean and chapter
appointed canons of the old priory. For example, John Austane and John
Thomson, who were brothers of the old establishment in 1540 (L. \3 P. of
Hen. VllJ. xv. 301, 305), were two of the eight minor canons in 1559, when
the Royal Commission under the Act of Uniformity sat in the chapter-house of
Carlisle Cathedral (S.P. Dom. Elizabeth, MS. vol. x. f. 88).
2l8
Carlisle Cathedral
The Augustinian chapter gradually melted into a chapter of
secular clergy, all appointed by the Crown, till Queen Mary
transferred the patronage of the four prebendal stalls to the bishop.1
The prior and convent became the dean and chapter of Carlisle
by easy transition without a break in continuity. It was a growth
rather than a reconstruction.
APPENDIX
The following table, written on the fly-leaf of the present writer's copy
of the Statutes of Carlisle Cathedral, made while Dr. Bolton was Dean,
1735-63, may illustrate the composition of the Cathedral staff about that
date, with the respective stipends and allowances. It should be compared
with Statute, No. 32, de stipendiis ministrorum^ upon which Dr. Prescott,
translator and editor, has given a very valuable note (Stat. of Carl. Cath.y
pp. 72-4).
Stipendia.
Pro mensa et
communiis
per mensem.
Pro togis.
Tot.
Minor Canon. -
3
10
8
O
5
4
I
0
0
8
O
0
Inform. Pueror.
8
i?
4
O
5
4
I
o
o
'3
6
8
Magist. Chorist.
5
IO
8
O
5
4
O
15
o
9
15
0
Diacon. -
2
IO
0
0
4
8
O
18
o
6
8
8
Subdiacon.
2
0
o
0
4
8
O
18
o
5
18
8
Cleric. -
2
'9
2
O
4
8
0
«3
6
6
13
4
Subsacrist.
2
16
8
0
o
0
o
IO
0
3
6
8
Virgifer -
2
ii
8
0
6
0
o
15
o
9
6
8
Janitor
3
16
8
O
o
0
o
10
0
A
6
8
Pincern. -
2
16
8
O
3
4
o
10
0
5
IO
0
Coq.
I
J3
4
O
3
4
o
10
0
4
6
8
Chorist. -
O
15
0
O
3
4
o
8
4
•j
6
8
Pauper. -
4
to
o
O
0
0
o
IO
o
5
o
0
Subcoq. -
o
18
4
O
0
o
o
8
4
6
8
Vicedecan.
I
6
8
O
o
o
o
0
0
6
8
Receptor -
5
0
0
O
o
o
o
o
0
5
0
0
Thesaurar.
i
6
8
O
0
o
o
o
0
6
8
Praecentor
i
o
o
O
0
0
o
o
0
o
o
Sacrist. -
i
o
o
O
o
o
o
o
o
o
0
Seneschall.
i
6
8
O
o
o
o
0
o
6
8
Auditor -
2
'3
4
o
0
o
o
o
0
2
13
4
pe
annu
m.
pe
die
m.
Decan.
29
2
6
O
5
O
...
I 2O
7
6
Canon.
7
O
IO
o
0
10
22
5
o
1 Pat. Roll, 4 & 5 Philip and Mary, pt. 13. The date of the patent is
7th March, 1558. Compare Tanner, Notitia, p. 75, with Nicolson and Burn,
Hilt, of Cumberland, ii. 246.
JAMES WILSON.
The Fenwick Improvement of Knowledge
Society l
T
1 Knowledge is the treasure of the soul '
1834-1842.
HE following persons are members of the Society
Nov i6th 1835
1 Andrew Gemmell 6d.
2 Daniel Love 6d.
3 Robert Howat 6d.
4 John Kirkland 6d.
5 Thomas Fulton 6d.
6 William Fulton Senr 6d.
7 John Fauldo 6d.
8 Alexander Armour 6d.
9 .William Morton 6d.
10 Robert Qnr 6d.
11 John Gemmell Senr 6d.
12 James Taylor 6d.
13 Alexander Fulton
14 John Brown 6d.
15 John Gemmell Junr 6d.
1 6 Mathew Fulton 6d.
17 William Clark 6d.
1 8 John Blundell 6d.
19 William Fulton Junr 6d.
29 John Fulton 6d.
21 Peter Gemmell 6d.
22 William Taylor 6d.
23 Alexander Dunlop 6d.
24 Matthew Dunlop 6d.
25 Andrew Cairnduff 6d.
26 Alexr Murdoch 6d.
6d.
Robert Howat Clerk
Daniel Love Treasurer
James Taylor Librarian
Oct 1 3th 1835
The Society purchased Chambers Information for the people
for the use of the Members Price 6/3.
Nov. 1 6th. The Society agreed to uplift one penny at each
meeting from each member2 and that those who are after halfpast
seven oclock in coming to the meeting will be fined in one half-
penny if a Reasonable [excuse] is not given.2
1 Continued from Scottish Historical Review, xvii. 137.
2 This rule abolished.
220 The Fenwick Improvement
The Society purchased a Catechism of Phrenology Price i/-
Decr 28. 1835.
It was agreed that William Morton be Clerk to the
Society.
The Society purchased a Catechism of Geography Price gd.
March yth.
The Society purchased a pamphlet on England Ireland &
America Price 6d. April 4th.
The Society purchased a pamphlet on Ireland and O'connel
price 8d. May 2d.
The Society purchased Milton's prose (select) works Price
losh 6d. May I3th.
The Society purchased Taits exposure of the spy System.
1837. January 23. Elected officebearers for the ensueing year
viz John Gemmell Clerk Thomas Fulton Treasurer James
Taylor Librarian
1838. January 8th. Elected officebearers for the ensueing
year viz Thomas Fulton Treasurer John Kirkland Librarian
John Gemmelh ~
James Taylor /
Oct 29th. The following Resolution which was stated at the
previous meeting was finally adopted
That on every alternate meeting or monthly ; each member
shall bring forward a written article, either original, or copied,
which he shall read to the society.
1839. January 2ist. Elected for the ensuing year
James Taylor Treasurer
Thomas Fulton) c
T , ^ n [becretanes
John Gemmell J
John Kirkland Librarian.
1840 January 6
1841 January 4 [Same list as in 1839 repeated]
1842 January 3
[1841.] April 12. Resolved, that reading papers be dis-
continued.
[1842.] July 4. Resolution carried to dissolve the Society,
to be reconsidered (as required by the I3th Article) on
July 18.
July 1 8th. Reversed the above vote and agreed to continue
the society.
Elected Alexr Murdoch one of the secretaries, in room of
Thomas Fulton resigned.
of Knowledge Society
221
Note. — Along with the little Minute Book is the following
Passport :
By John Craufurd of Craufurdland Preses to the meeting of
Commissioners for the District of Kilmarnock
Permit the Bearer James Hopkine Taylor att ffinnick kirk who is of ane
honest and fair character capable to subsist himself by his employment and
so noway under the description of the late act of parliament anent the
recruiting of his Majestys' Forces to pass and repass to and from Irvine and
other places In the prosecution of his lawfull Business without any trouble
or molestation He allways behaveing himself as becometh a dutifull and
Loyal Subject. Given under my hand Att Craufurdland this twenty
second of January 1 757 ; CRAUFURD
To all concerned J.P.
[Endorsed] Pasport
I757-
APPENDIX.
MINUTES &c. OF THE FENWICK. EMIGRATION
SOCIETY. APRIL 23 1839.
Regulations.
Preamble — A fearful gloom is fast thickening over the horizon of our
country. Every prospect of comfort to the working man is daily becoming
darker and more dreary. Trade and manufactures are rapidly leaving our
shores. And, to all appearance, a crisis is at hand, in which the sufferings
of the working classes will in the first instance, form a prominent feature.
It is desirable therefore, that they should have it in their power, as far as
possible, to avoid the miseries to which a large portion of the community
must be reduced by the depression of wages, scarcity of work, and starvation
by hunger through the operation of the corn laws. This can be best
effected by fleeing from the scene of destitution and distress. But as it
cannot be effected without considerable expence, and as few working men
can command a sufficient fund for that purpose, unless by the gradual pro-
cess of weekly deposits, it is hereby proposed to form an association for the
purpose of encouraging emigration amongst the working classes, and of
acquiring the means necessary for the accomplishment of that object. The
following regulations will form the basis of the association.
[There follows a constitution, providing for weekly deposits
which were to be consigned on deposit in bank. The application
of the moneys is sufficiently indicated by the sixth regulation : — ]
6th. That if any member is going abroad he may have the whole
amount of his deposits with interest due (except on the deposits of the
current half-year if incomplete) at any time, by giving ten days' warning
to the Treasurer. If he is not going abroad or has a claim by article yth
he cannot receive any money till the half-yearly meeting.
222 The Fen wick Improvement
[At half-yearly meeting the interest was distributed according to
the shares of capital contributed. At the first half-yearly meeting
Nov 5 1839 the total deposits were £66, and the interest dis-
tributed only js. 3d., but the balance of funds in hand had risen in
December 1851 to £381, and the dividend of interest was
j£io IDS. i id. Several entries in the Minutes are of interest as
regards emigration, and several references occur to persons whose
names also appear in the record of the Fenwick Improvement of
Knowledge Society. Accordingly a few extracts will be of value
towards the editing of the latter.]
Fenwick May I 1839. A meeting was held this evening according to
arrangement in Mr Cairnduffs school, when the Association was formed
by subscribing the regulations. The following persons were also chosen
managers Alexander Dunlop Preses Matthew Fulton Clerk John Taylor
Treasurer and Allan Gait, Thomas Fulton, William Bicket and William
Morton ordinary managers.
June 4 1839. The Society held its first monthly meeting when an
interesting account of the passage and safe arrival at New York of four
emigrants from the Parish of Fenwick was laid before them.
Augt 6 1839. Some extracts were read from a letter from an emigrant
who has located himself at Parkhill, Saltfleet, County of Wentworth,
District of Gore, Upper Canada, N.B. America.
Sept 3 1830. Notes from extracts of a letter in the Ayrshire Examiner
No from a Settler in New Zealand were read to the society.
Oct i 1839. The Society held their monthly meeting this evening
when a part of Chambers No 5 of the 'Information to the people' on
emigration to the United States was read.
Dec 3 1839. Held the monthly meeting, when a few extracts from an
emigrants letter was given concerning the state of America and the qualifi-
cation necessary for emigrants thither.
Apr 17 1840. Uplifted for behoof of Mr Matthew Fulton who is going
to America.
2 May 1848. The Preses Robert Gilmour having left for Glasgow
James Taylor occupies his place.
November 16 1857. Intimation being previously given the Emigration
Society met this evening to elect a President in the room of James Taylor
deceased when John Fulton was unanimously chosen to that office.
NOTE BY GEO. NEILSON, LL.D.
It is impossible to glance at the themes discussed without an impression
that the superior character of the intellectual standpoint, which on the
whole is reflected, may have been due to the dominating force of one or
two individuals in the Society. While * the Utility of Societys for the
Improvement of Knowledge' might be a commonplace enough commence-
ment of programme, the second item, the debate between implicit belief as
against rational conviction, raised the great issue of Faith versus Reason, and
of Knowledge Society 223
showed the rationalistic bent. The affirmation of voluntaryism in religion
as against establishment, and still more the preference of republicanism to
monarchy, are expressions of well-defined revolutionary tendency even
when checked by the qualification that the replacement of monarchy by a
republic should be achieved not by physical but by moral means.
American institutions evidently made their appeal to some of the
members, though we have no record of the night when the contest
between America and Britain was discussed. On the labour problem the
vote in favour of repealing restrictive laws, the ' General Conversation on
the State of Society,' and the pronouncement in favour of household
suffrage, serve as a reminder that in 1835 the once revolutionary movement
was passing through its phase of reform and radicalism on the way to
Chartism. As regards 'the once popular doctrine of Ghosts and Witches'
the note of emancipation from credulity is emphatic.
Various views, as for instance on science and religion, on the ceremony
of marriage and on the temperance question, are as interesting in their
social significance as are the political proposal to dispense with the House
of Lords, the cautious resolution about * the lawfulness and propriety of
blood-eating,' and the versatility of these rural discussions ranging with
assured freedom from the abstractions of political principle to the
niceties of literary preference and taste.
The discourse on astronomy by Thomas Fulton introduces a most
interesting connection with a somewhat famous mechanical construction,
of which Fenwick is entitled to the honour. This is the orrery con-
structed by John Fulton. It is not without significance that the ingenious
and surprising mechanical rendering of the celestial movements should have
had as its antecedent the studies of astronomy pursued by and discussed in
the Fenwick Society. As a community the village circle manifested a
quite unusual intellectual aptitude, and their keen political sense was
reflected in such bodies as the Fenwick Weavers' Society, founded in 1761,
the Masons' Society, and the Friendly Society, which were all maintaining
their activities during the period of these village debates. Another
association expressive of a thoughtful and provident standpoint among the
people was formed in 1839 : this was the Fenwick Emigration Society, of
which some general impression may be formed from the few extracts from
the minutes given in the appendix, supra. It reveals the villager of
Fenwick as a thrifty Scot with a keen eye upon his prospects in life, and a
shrewd as well as courageous determination to adopt the career offering the
higher promise.
The Preamble, product of a period when the Chartist movement was
rapidly approaching the explosive point, reflects the rhetorical pessimism of
its time. The industrial crisis was no doubt severe, but the gloom of the
Preamble was perhaps hardly warranted. Yet it can scarcely be doubted
that such emigration societies as that of Fenwick were serviceable and
wise institutions whereby (on the principle long familiar in building societies)
the modest weekly contributions of the members became, when emigration
was resolved upon, available to assist their settlement in the new world
beyond the ocean.
224 Fen wick Improvement of Knowledge Society
To return, however, to the debates of the Improvement Society. The
notice of the competitive readings of the 'Tory poets' on the one hand,
and of Byron as the sole representative of the more progressive view, with
the decisive conclusion reached after the experiment, will be perused with
amused interest for its naYve combination of critical and political opinion.
Paper currency, land nationalisation, 'the moral effect of Poetry,' as well
as its generally * radical tendency,' the discussions of geology, and the
record of book purchases made by the Society, all attest a characteristic
inclination of mind of a sturdy and alert membership. Their New Year
meetings of 1838 and 1839 are felicitously recorded with a pen evidently
flowing with sympathy for the social, political, sentimental, poetical,
oratorical, musical, and genial traits exhibited by the company on each
occasion. Such meetings were doubtless memories of joy to the participants,
and certainly the gleeful company was happy in its secretary, whose detailed
record now challenges the criticism of a wider world than that of the little
Fenwick circle. Despite their discontents and dubieties, and the gloom
that brooded over their political and industrial outlook, there was room in
their hearts and in their lives for gaiety and wit and eloquence, the flashes
of which still shine from the faded page.
A Side Light on the 1715
/CAPTAIN CHARLES POOLE was in command of
V^ H.M.S. Pearl when cruising off the east coast of Scotland
in 1715. Some papers of his, which, by the kindness of his
relatives, 1 am permitted to use, shed an interesting side-light on
the naval operations in the North Seas of that year.
Captain Poole was appointed to the Pearl on 26th July, 1715,
his commission being signed by the Earl of Orford, Admiral
Russell, who was then First Lord of the Admiralty, and others;
and a month later he received his instructions from Admiral
George Byng, through Captain James Stewart of H.M.S. Royal
Anne Galley, as follows : —
* By Sir George Byng, Admiral of the White, and
Commander in "Chief of his Majties. Fleet in
the Channell.
* You are hereby required and directed to take the Pearle
mder your command, and proceed with her and your own ship
to the Coast of North Britain, and cruise there on a station
between St. Abb's Head and Buchaness, looking now and then
into the Firth of Murray, to gaine what intelligence you can ;
and when you meet with the Port Mahon, you are likewise to
take her under your command, her Captain being hereby directed
to observe your orders.
' You are to employ the ships with you in such manner upon
this station, that you may spread the whole coast within the limits
of your cruise, appointing signalls to each other, to be joined,
upon occasion, and you are to use your utmost care and diligence
to speak with, and search all such ships or vessells as you may
meet with, and have reason to suspect are going between France
and Scotland ; and if you shall find on board them any arms,
ammunition, money, or persons whom you may have reason to
apprehend are officers employed by the Pretender, or any other
suspected persons, you are to take particular care that they be
226 Ninian Hill
secured, either on board the ships under your command or by
the Civil Magistrates on shore, until further order, and you are
also to be careful that some persons belonging to the ships under
your command be in readiness to give evidence upon oath if
required, where, when, and in what manner the aforesaid persons
were seized ; and that such papers as shall be found about them
be in like manner secured ; and that they be so marked by
yourself and signing officers, or such other persons as you shall
judge proper, as that upon occasion, you and they may be able
when thereunto required to make oath, that they are the very
papers so seized as aforesaid.
' And whereas you will receive herewith papers of Intelligence
concerning some vessells suspected to be going between Havre
de Grace and North Britain with arms aboard ; if you shall meet
with any of those vessells, you are to be particularly watchful of
intercepting them ; and if any ships or vessells that you shall thus
search shall make resistance, you are in that case to take, sink, or
destroy them ; and to suffer no ships or vessells to pass you,
by any means without their being first searched, and that you are
satisfied they are not employed on any such service as aforesaid.
' You are to remaine on this service untill further Order,
sending up to the Admlty. from time to time frequent account
of your proceedings. Dated on board the Windsor in the Downes
the 28th. August 1715. (sgd.) G. BYNG.
* To Capt. Stewart,
' Commander of his Maties. Ship,
' Royal Anne Galley.'
Admiral Sir George Byng, who signed these instructions, was
created Viscount Torrington a few years later in recognition of
his victory over the Spanish fleet off Cape Passaro. He was the
father of the better remembered Admiral Byng who, less fortunate
in battle off Minorca, was shot, as a witty Frenchman said, four
encourager les autres.
It will be recollected that the Earl of Mar held his great
hunting party at Braemar on 26th August, and that he threw off
all disguise and raised his standard on 6th September. Captain
Poole obtained an interesting letter written by Mar three days
later addressed to his friend * Jockie ' — otherwise John Forbes of
Inverernan, which indicates the exasperating difficulties he had to
contend with. The Highlanders were showing themselves
unexpectedly indifferent to the claims of the Old Pretender, and
A Side Light on the 1715 227
Mar's temper was already giving way — surely a bad sign. His
letter l is as follows : —
'Invercauld Septer. 9th at night 1715.
' JOCKIE,
' Ye was in the right not to come with the 100 men ye
sent up to night, when I expected four times the numbers. It is
a pretty thing when all the Highlands of Scotland are now rysing
upon their King and countrys account, as I have accounts from
them since they were with me, and the gentlemen in most of our
neighbouring lowlands, expecting us down to join them that my
men should be only refractory. Is not this the thing we are now
about which they have been wishing these six and twenty years.
And now when it is come and the King and countrys cause at
stake, will they for ever sitt still and see all perish.
* I have used gentleness too long and see I'll be forced to putt
other orders I have in execution, I have sent you inclosed ane
order for the Lordship of Kildrimmie which you are immediately
to intimat to all my vassalls. If they give ready obedience it will
make some amends, and if not ye may tell them from me that it
will not be in my power to save them (were I willing) from being
treated as enemies by those who are ready soon to join me ; and
they may depend on it that I will be the first to propose and order
their being so ; particularly lett my own tenants in Kildrimmie
know that if they come not furth with their best arms that I will
send a pairtie to burn what they shall miss taking from them, and
they may believe this not only a threat, but by all that's sacred
I'll putt it in execution, lett my loss be what it will, that it may be
example to others. You are to tell the gentlemen that I'll expect
them in their best acutriments on horse back and no excuse to be
accected off. Go about this with all diligence and come yourself
and lett me know your having done so. All this is not only as
ye will be answerable to me but to your King and country.
' Yr. assured friend and servant,
' (Sic subscribitur) MAR.
* To John Forbes of Inverernan,
* Baillie in Kildrimmie.'
1 This letter, and the order which follows, are printed from a contemporary
manuscript copy. See Rae's The History of the Rebellion rats' d against His Majesty
King George I.; the Second Edition (London : A. Millar, 1746), pages 413, 414,
for another copy of the same document.
228 Ninian Hill
The order which Mar refers to is in the following more
dignified terms : —
* Our rightful and naturall King James the 8th by the grace of
God who is now coming to relieve us from our oppressions, having
been pleased to entrust me with the direction of his affairs, and
the command of his forces in this ancient Kingdom of Scotland,
and some of his faithful subjects and servants mett at Aboyne,
viz., the Lord Huntley, the Lord Tilliebardin, the Earle Marshall,
the Earle of Southesk, Glengarrie from the Clanns, Glendrule
from the Earle of Breadalbin and Gentlemen of Argyleshyre,
Mr. Patrick Lyon of Auchterhouse, the Laird of Auldbar,
Lieutenant General George Hamilton, Major General Gordon
and myself having taken into consideration his Majesties last and
late orders to us, find that as this is now the time that he ordered
us to appear openly in arms for him, so it seems to us absolutely
necessary for his Majesties Service, and the relieving of our native
country from all its hardships, that all his faithful and loving
subjects and lovers of their country should with all possible speed
putt themselves into arms.
* These are therefore in his Majesties name and authority and
by virtue of the power aforesaid, and by the King's speciall order
to me thereanent to require and impower you forthwith to raise
your fencible men with their best arms, and you are immediately
to march them to join me and some other of the King's forces at
the Inver of Braemar on Monday nixt in order to proceed in our
march to attend the King's Standard with his other forces.
' The King intending that his forces shall be payed from the
time of their setting out, He expects as he positively orders that
they behave themselves civilly and committ no plundering or other
disorders, upon the highest penalties and his displeasure which is
expected you'l see observed.
* Now is the time for all good men to show their zeal for his
Majesties service, whose cause is so deeply concerned, and the
relief of our native country from oppression and a foreign yoak
too heavy for us and our posterity to bear, and to endeavour the
restoring not only of our rightful and native King but also our
country to its ancient free and independent constitution under him
whose ancestours have reigned over us for so many generations.
* In so honourable good and just a cause We cannot doubt of
the assistance direction and blessing of Almighty God, who has so
often rescued the royall family of Stewart and our country from
sinking under oppression.
A Side Light on the 1715 229
{ Your punctual observance of these orders is expected, for the
doing of which, this shall be to you and all you employ in the
execution of them a sufficient warrant, Given at Braemar 9 Septer.
I^15- (SicSubr.} MAR.
' To the Baillies & the rest of the
4 Gentlemen of the Lordship of Kildrimmie.'
These stirring events up Deeside evidently drew the Pearl to
Aberdeen, where Captain Poole was welcomed by the loyal
citizens and presented on the iyth September with the freedom
of the city. By the beginning of October the Jacobite forces
were moving south, and the importance of preventing them from
crossing the line of the Forth was realised. Accordingly we find
the Pearl in the Firth of Forth, where Captain Poole received the
following communication from the Duke of Argyll, who wrote
from the 'Camp at Stirling 5th October 1715' to 'the Captain
commanding any of his Majties. Ships in the Road of Leith ' as
follows : —
'SlR,
' Having given severall orders for removing all boats,
barks, and ships from the Coast of Fife to the other side of the
water which have still proved ineffectual, tho I cannot pretend to
send you any orders, yet I must beg the favour of you to be
assisting in getting put in execution what is judged very necessary
for his Majesties service and therefore desire you to send your
Boats to the several Towns and Harbours on the Coast of Fife
and force all ships and vessalls whatsoever to go forthwith to
Leith, Prestonpans, or any such place on this side, and whatever
master of any vessell shall refuse to obey to send him prisoner to
Edenburgh ; in doing this you will please to act in concert with
the Provost of Edenburgh.
'I am,
f Your most Obed. Humble Servant,
'ARGYLL.'
Captain Poole docquets this letter — * Reed. 8 ber 8. J an hour
ifter 7 in the morning.'
The Duke of Argyll was evidently anxious lest the rebel forces
should find means to cross the Forth. On 8th October he issued
resh instructions to Capt. Poole from the camp at Stirling : —
4 You are hereby authorised in case of resistance by force of
rms, to bring over to Leith, disable, or destroy, all the ships,
Q
230 Ninian Hill
barks, or boats found in the Harbours of the County of Fife,
conforming to the particular instructions to be given you by the
Lord Provost of Edenburgh, Lord Advocat, or Lord Justice
Clerk.'
The problem which the authorities in Edinburgh had to solve
was — where would the rebels attempt to cross the Forth ? On
the 9th October the Earl of Hopetoun wrote the following letter
to John Campbell, Lord Provost : —
'Mv LORD,
' I was in hopes to have found the frigat before me at
Queensferry, but I understand she has never come by Newhaven
so I entreat you would be pleased to order her up without delay
for I know there is a good many boats and some barks still upon
the northside, and I was told to-day by a skipper who came from
the North ferry, that they had seized some small boats about Aber-
dour and sent them to Bruntisland harbour, and no doubt if they
be not prevented they will do the same with all the boats on that
side ; about four o'clock this afternoon when I was at the ferry
we observed a good many horsemen on the top of the hill on the
Northside but I cannot condescend of their number. I know
you'l forgive this trouble.'
The next day the Lord Provost sent the following letter to
Captain Poole, and enclosed the Earl of Hopetoun's letter as
above : —
<SlR,
'I have just now yours, and did send your letter last
night to the Duke of Argyle and shall send yours this day to
Mr. Cockburne. My Lord Advocat and severall others are of
opinion that since it's from Bruntisland the Rebells are to come,
that at least two of the men of war should (when they are not
cruising) anchor as nigh to the harbour as possible, so as to be in
condition to fyre in on them in caise they attempt to come
out. They are the more convinced of this, that yesterday the
Rebells brought up two barks and they say some boats from
Aberdour and from other places to the wester of Bruntisland.
And also it's thought fitt that you come to anchor as little as
possible.
'There is letters from Stirling that says a ship is come to
Aberdeen which passed the men of war without searching.
A Side Light on the 1715 231
' I send you a letter I had just now from the Earle of Hopetoun
together with the news papers.
4 1 am,
1 Your most humble Servant,
'Jo : CAMPBELL.
'Edinburgh, loth October, 1715.'
Apparently the local authorities were misled by a feint on the
part of the rebels to the west of Burntisland which was intended
to cover their operations in the East Neuk of Fife. If, in conse-
quence, the Pearl was kept cruising between Burntisland and
North Queensferry, it is not difficult to understand how the
hostile force was able to embark at Pittenweem, Elie, and Crail on
the night of I2th and I3th October, and cross unmolested to the
Lothian coast.
Notwithstanding the passage of the Forth by the rebel forces,
the authorities were still apprehensive of an attack on Burntisland.
On 26th October Captain Stewart sent to Captain Poole a
memorandum from the Royal Anne Galley in Leith Road as
follows : —
' If the garrison of Brunt Island should be attack'd and
straightn'd, the Officer Commanding there will cause a great fire
to be made towards the sea, or blow off some powder upon the
top of the Castle, which signal you are to observe, and if I don't
answer it by firing two guns towards the town, you are to give me
immediate notice in order to my advertising the Government
thereof, but in case the weather is such that you cannot
conveniently send a boat to me, then you are on that side next
to me to hoist two lights of an equal height in your main shrouds
and keep them out untill I fire two guns towards the town.'
Early the following month the Pearl was ordered away from
the Forth by Captain James Migheles, thus : —
* You are hereby required and directed with his Majties. ship
the Pearl under your command without loss of time to proceed
and cruise off Aberdeen till further orders, to observe the motions
of the Rebells and prevent their being supplied with provisions or
arms, or being joined by any others as far as in you lies ; and you
are to be particularly careful in looking out for a Provincale Bark
of about ninety tons, her quarter and head painted green and
yellow mixed with a little gold, manned with Scotchmen, whereof
one George is Master, suspected to have arms on board, is sailed
232 Ninian Hill
from Havre de Grace bound to Aberdeen, and upon meeting with
her, to seize and secure her together with all her persons and
papers that shall be found on board her ; and you are to be very
diligent in executing all former orders you received from Capt.
Stewart for intercepting or destroying all ships or vessells you
shall find in the interest or service of the Pretender. Dated on
board the Orford\n Leith Road this loth of November 1715.'
The last of Captain Poole's papers refers to the vain hopes
cherished by the Jacobites of receiving effective aid from France
through the Regent Orleans. It is a letter addressed to him from
' Capt. James Stewart Commander of his Majties. Ship the Royal
Anne Galley pursuant to an order from Sir John Jennings, Amll.
of the White Squadron of his Majties. Fleet dated 29th day of
January 1715 to me : —
* Whereas I have received intelligence that six hundred Officers
are ready to embark for Scotland, from Calais and that part of
France, as also that Sir John Erskine has a considerable sum of
money to send over for animating and supporting the Present
unnaturall Rebellion, and that General Eslin and Lord Duffus
are gone from some port near Aberdeen with ordnance on the
same vile design ; and there being likewise just reason to
apprehend that the late Duke of Ormond with other disaffected
persons is hovering about the Ports of West France in order to
make use of the first opportunity to come over and join the
Rebells : you are therefore hereby required and directed with his
Majties. Ship under your command to cruise in company with
his Majties. ship under my command between Buchanness and
the Isle of May, so that you may most probably intercept any
ships or vessells coming on or going from the coast with money,
arms, or persons of what denomination soever in the interest of
the Pretender, to which end you are to keep the most diligent
look out, and to stay no longer with the ship under your
command in any Port or Harbour whither the extremity of
weather may force you than shall be absolutely necessary : and in
case of meeting with any such ships or vessels, to use your utmost
endeavours to come up with, and seize them, with all papers you
can gett into your hands, concerning which you have received
particular instructions : or upon resistance to Burn, Sink or
otherwise destroy them : and to prevent, as far as may be, the
Illusions (sic) or any ships or vessels that you may be able to
speak with on the Coast, you are to send such of them, of whose
A Side Light on the 1715
233
good intention to the Government you shall not be very well
assured to the Adml. in Leith Road in order to a stricter
examination (giving me on the first opportunity an account
thereof) the exigency of affairs at this juncture requiring the
strictest Inquisition : and as often as wind and weather will
permit, you are to look into Aberdeen, Montross and Stone
Hyth, and to endeavour to destroy any vessels or embarkations
you may find there, or in any other port near your station in the
arbitrary possession of the Rebels, according to the Intelligences
you may be able to gain, so far as the same may be judged
practicable with regard to the safety of his Majesties ship under
your command, and you are to continue on this station and
service till further order taking all opportunities of giving me
account of your proceedings : Dated on bd. his Majties. Ship
Royal Anne Galley off St. Andrews the 3ist January 1715/16.
' (Sgd.) JAS. STEWART.'
NINIAN HILL.
Reviews of Books
MISCELLANY OF THE SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY. Third Volume. Pp.
vi, 343, n, 1 6, 8. Demy 8vo. Edinburgh : Printed for the Society
by T. & A. Constable. 1919.
THE first article in this most interesting collection consists of the records
of courts-martial held at Dundee from iyth September, 1651, to loth
January, 1652, during the occupation of the town by General Monk's
army, edited by Godfrey Davies, M.A. The Records themselves are
preserved in volume xxi. of the Clarke MSS. in Worcester College,
Oxford. Dundee fell on 1st September, 1651, to a force composed of
cavalry, sailors, and the regiments of Monk and Ashfeild, after an assault
lasting only a few hours, but with a loss of some 800 of all ages and sexes.
After a preliminary plunder of the town, in the course of which the English
army got £200,000 in money and valuables as booty, the garrisoning of
the place and the establishment of martial law pursued their ordinary
course ; and these Records of some twenty courts-martial on soldiers
and civilians give an excellent idea not only of military justice as it
obtained in the Cromwellian armies, but of the methods employed in
dealing with a civilian population whose opposition, though scotched,
was not killed.
The military offences were mostly cases of assault on civilians, larceny,
drunkenness and swearing ; in only one case was the sentence of the court
that the prisoner should be * shotte to death,' though in one or two others
it is difficult to see why the same sentence was not inflicted. On the
other hand, for comparatively slight offences the punishments were extremely
severe, judged by modern standards. { Riding the wooden horse ' was the
commonest, and, aggravated as it was by the addition of weights, in the
form of a couple of muskets, to the heels, must have been a most painful
and embarrassing one. There were little touches of humour, too, in the
methods of application which no doubt appealed to the rough humour of
the time, e.g. hanging pint stoups round the neck of the convicted drunkard,
and making him subsequently kneel and apologise for his crime. Flogging,
running the gauntlet, the 'strapado,' or hanging a man up by his thumbs
with only his toes on the ground, were other methods calculated to main-
tain discipline ; and the evidence shows that officers and N.C.O.'s habitually
struck men in the ranks ; swearing was punished by gagging. The courts
occasionally referred to the Mosaic books for enlightenment.
Of the cases against civilians, only one really serious one, that of an
alleged spy, occurred. This was punished by death. Most offenders,
Miscellany of the Scottish History Society 235
men and women alike, were flogged and expelled from the town ; ducking
was also inflicted on some of the women. The most interesting of the
civilian cases was that which arose out of the refusal of the Countess of
Airlie to have a troop billeted on her. This resulted in considerable
damage to the property of the lady, and, incidentally, to the discovery
of concealed arms.
The Bishop of Galloway's Correspondence, edited by William Douglas,
consists of 1 8 letters, dated 1679-1685, and deals principally with ecclesias-
tical matters in that troubled diocese. James Atkine, Bishop of Galloway,
formerly Bishop of Moray, lived in Edinburgh, < it being thought unreason-
able to oblige a reverend prelate of his years to live among such a rebellious
and turbulent people,' and administered his diocese from there. Those
were the days of the ' test ' introduced by James, Duke of York ; and
there are frequent references to it in the correspondence. Three of the
letters in 1685 are appeals from episcopal ministers for security from the
visitations of ' parties of rebells sculking round and making inrods Upon
our borders,' and make mention of the assistance they had received from
John Graham of Claverhouse and his brother.
The Diary of Sir James Hope of Hopetoun, edited by Sir James
Balfour Paul, covers part of a rather commonplace life during the years
1646 to 1654. It is unfortunately incomplete at points where information
might have been valuable. Born in 1614, Sir James was sixth son of
Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall, the Lord Advocate, and was educated
for the Bar. With his first wife, Anna Foulis, he acquired the considerable
property of the lands and barony of Crawfordmuir in Lanarkshire, which
included what is now known as the Leadhills. To the working of this
estate, especially the * leid mynes,' the laird of Hopetoun devoted much
of his time, with success and profit. His family of fifteen children, all but
three of whom died in early childhood, afforded him plenty of material
as a diarist ; and the description of their ailments and intimate details of
their necropsies are an unusual feature of the work. He sat in the Scottish
Parliament and was appointed a Lord of Session in 1649. Politically, as
the editor shows, Hopetoun was a ' wobbler ' and never really commanded
the full confidence of either party. At first a Royalist, he was never quite
sure where his interest lay. On one occasion, in 1651, the advice he
tendered to Charles II. resulted in a brief imprisonment, and the following
year he threw in his lot with the Parliamentary party. Unfortunately,
details of his conversion do not appear in the Diary. In 1653 ne was
appointed by Cromwell a representative of Scotland in Barebone's Par-
liament, and he gives an interesting account of the dissolution of that body.
He does not appear to have held any public position after that, but devoted
himself to his estate; and died in 1661.
Dreams, of which he appears to have had many of great vividness, are
frequently noted in the Diary.
It will probably never be known why, after all he had done for the
position of his Church in Scotland, Patrick Graham, Archbishop of St.
Andrews, was ruined judicially by those who owed him so much. In
236 Miscellany of the Scottish History Society
the introduction to The Instructions to John Herseman, Papal Nuncio, for
the Trial of Patrick Graham, 1476, Mr. Hannay opposes Buchanan's view
that it was on account of his reforming zeal — on the contrary he was a
Pope's man. The significance of his career was that it raised the question
of interference with the appointments to prelacies, which was finally
settled by severance from Rome. The * Instructions ' themselves are
clearly intended to give him as fair a trial as possible — a point on which
some historians hold a different opinion.
The ' distrest estate of the Kirk of Chryst ' in France and elsewhere in
the year following the Edict of Nantes, which its enemies were trying to
render inoperative, aroused widespread sympathy in Scotland in 1622 ;
and Dr. Hay Fleming has extracted from the receipts of M. Basnage,
deputy of the General Assembly of Reformed Churches in France, and
other sources, lists of individual contributions. Haddingtonshire subscribed
62305 Scots, made up of quite small sums from all classes ; and St.
uthbert's, Edinburgh, gave £800, the details of which are set out at
length. In this connexion it is well to remember that the Lords of the
High Commission circularised every diocese in the country.
The Forbes Baron Court Book, 1659-1678, is the third of the series
which have now been published by the Society, and, like its predecessors,
throws much light on the conditions of life in Scotland at the time. There
is an admirable and instructive Introduction by Dr. Maitland Thomson, who
shows how, as compared with earlier times, the Baron Courts in Scotland
in the seventeenth century had ceased to exercise the powers formerly
exercised by them. The right of pit and gallows had fallen into desuetude ;
and this, and other restrictions in the activities of these Courts, was probably
largely due to the use by the Court of Session of the power of advocation,
i.e. of removing any cause from any court and transferring it to the appro-
priate tribunal. The effects of Cromwell's institution of Baron Courts
on the English model in 1654 — although they never worked in the manner
intended — resulted in the discontinuance of some of the old Baron Courts.
Cromwell's institution was a small debts court, whereas the Forbes Court
was more of the nature of a modern police court.
The book contains records of a large number of cases of all sorts,
principally connected with the payment of rents, teinds, the performance
of various obligatory duties on the barons' property, trespass and damage
to woods, moors, crops, etc., and breaches of the peace. These last were
extremely frequent, and must have been a source of considerable revenue
to Lord Forbes.
There are references to non-payment of public dues, the cost of main-
taining the militia, and the obligations of tenants to be in possession of
weapons according to their position in life.
The value of the Introduction is greatly enhanced by a Glossary of
archaic and provincial words.
The article is a valuable contribution to the social history of the time,
and it is to be hoped that the series will be continued.
BRUCE SETON.
Hume Brown: Surveys of Scottish History 237
SURVEYS OF SCOTTISH HISTORY. By P. Hume Brown, F.B.A., LL.D.,
Historiographer Royal for Scotland and Professor of Ancient Scottish
History and Palaeography, University of Edinburgh. Pp. xi, 192.
Demy 8vo. Glasgow : James MacLehose & Sons. 1919. 73. 6d.
net.
THE recent publication of this volume of papers by the late Professor Hume
Brown revives acutely the sense of loss which historical scholarship sustained
in his death a little more than a year ago. They have been collected by
Lord Haldane, who introduces them with a short but adequate apprecia-
tion of the life and character, and an estimate of the learning and achieve-
ments, of one who was his close friend for many years. There is still a
further legacy to come from this rich inheritance in a life of Goethe —
'whom the author looked upon as the greatest critic of life since
Aristotle,' — which was far advanced at his death, and will doubtless be
published shortly. In nothing that Professor Hume Brown has written
do his learning and sound and sure judgment — which from the beginning
have characterised his work — so admirably appear. His unrivalled know-
ledge of the sources of Scottish history, and particularly his researches in the
records of the Scots Privy Council, never betrayed him into becoming a mere
annalist, the easy pitfall of the too 'scientific historian,' and his wide culture
in humane letters, native and foreign, saved his great History of Scotland from
the faults of the romancer on the one hand, and the bias of the partisan on
the other. Too much has been said in depreciation of his style, which was
not naturally vivacious, but it is clear, adapted to its purpose and rises with
the theme ; and in these Surveys, several of which were introductory
lectures to his class, or addresses on popular occasions, it is easy and very
readable.
The book includes his inaugural address on * Methods of Writing
History * delivered on the founding of the Chair of History in Edinburgh /
University. In it he criticises the ' historic ' method, and shows how a
purely objective treatment is rendered impossible by the c double veil '
through which the historian must view past ages — * the veil of his own
personality and that of the age to which he himself belongs ' ; but he shows
how, nevertheless, ' in all of us there is the deposited impression of the
national evolution of which we are the individual products, and it is
precisely this impression that enables us to interpret the events and the
characters of the nation to which we each belong.' l It is certain that the
history of any people can never be learned from books alone. Facts may
be stated with perfect accuracy ; the chain of cause and effect in the
national development may be expounded with absolute clearness and
precision ; yet the informing spirit which produced the nation's ideals may
wholly have eluded what may be a mere mechanical process. It is hardly
too much to say, indeed, that half, and perhaps the better half, of our
knowledge of our national history, is unconsciously learnt ; and it is by
this unconscious knowledge that we interpret what we deliberately acquire.'
He therefore favours a view of the sources as objective as possible, checked
by comparison with the history of the parallel institutions and events in
other countries, and interpreted by the spirit of the age.
238 Hume Brown : Surveys of Scottish History
The ten other studies in this book on various epochs and aspects of
Scottish history illumine many difficult periods by setting forth the ruling
ideas which give meaning and coherence to the facts. They should be read
by every lover of his country, and nowhere will one approaching the study
of Scottish history for the first time find a more valuable introduction.
For him, the greatest interest may be found in * The Moulding of the
Nation ' and in * Four Representative Documents,' which bring out clearly
the great influence of religion in shaping the national destinies. But perhaps
the most valuable results of this historical method are found in the studies
dealing with the great part played for good by the turbulent Scottish nobles in
the national history, the regime of the later Stewart Kings, and the Union
of the Parliaments. All are enriched with spoil from the Privy Council
records, and by setting the Scottish scene in true perspective with its
contemporary European background. Other chapters deal with * Scotland
in the Eighteenth Century,' when in philosophy, science, literature and
art, the genius of the nation came to flower, with the < Intellectual Influences
of Scotland on the Continent,' and with ' Literature and History,' in which
the author concludes that * it is in the literature of any period that we have
the veritable expression of its spirit defeatured by no distorting medium.'
The volume closes with interesting sketches of the lives of * Florence
Wilson, A Forgotten Scholar of the Sixteenth Century,' and of ' Napier of
Merchiston,' whose contemporary and European fame was first founded
on a work on the Apocalypse, a striking instance of the state of rationalism
in his day. ROBERT LAMOND.
EUROPE AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. By Charles Sarolea. Pp. vi,
317. Crown 8vo. London : G. Bell & Sons, Ltd. 1919. 6s.net.
THIS is an able work, written by one who has for many years made a
close study of European politics. A native of Belgium, he has become
practically one of ourselves, and yet at the same time is able to view the
British position with a certain degree of impartiality, and to it he, it must
be admitted, is not wholly favourable. For he is utterly opposed to the
treaty recently concluded, to the conclusion of which this country con-
tributed so large a share. ' It has,' he says, * been the fashion for historians
to sneer at the peace settlement of the Congress of Vienna. But compared
to our provisional peace treaty, the Treaty of Vienna was a miracle of
political wisdom ; and certainly Alexander I., the Czar of all the Russias,
proved more democratic than even President Wilson.' While condemning
much, Dr. Sarolea is really an optimist, and is ever prepared to find good
coming out of evil. He finds even in Lenin and his acolytes the true
architects of the future, applying to them the words of Mephistopheles,
* they are the men that always will the evil and who ultimately always do
the good.' The mujik * is at last to come into his inheritance, and those
downtrodden serfs who to-day are raiding or burning the castles of the
German Baltic barons and the absentee Russian princes will eventually
prove to be the steadying force of the new order.' To the question, Is a
League of Nations possible and will it work ? his answer appears to be in
the affirmative. And yet a considerable portion of this book is devoted
Sarolea : Europe and the League of Nations 239
to setting forth with great clearness and force the various obstacles which
stand in the way of such a league. There are, to name some of them,
military, naval, economic, biological, racial, and even religious difficulties
to be overcome ; indeed, the opponents of such a league might find in
these pages much useful material wherewith to support their views.
While convinced that the recent peace settlement is the worst that could
have been devised, he at the same time admits that it is also * the best that
could have been made under the existing circumstances.' He is inclined
to attribute its faults to the fact that it was the work of amateur diplomacy
by party politicians. * To endanger the future of the world in the interests
of an ephemeral coalition . . . has been the tragedy of the Paris conference.'
In the attack which he proceeds to make upon the influence and demands
of the mob, the author surely overlooks the fact that a large section of it —
what may be known as the Labour Party — seems to share his own views
in favour of a generous dealing towards Germany and in condemnation
of the blockade. But the chapter upon the limitations of Democracy is
well worth reading in these days when this form of Government is sought
to be identified with political perfection.
Dr. Sarolea considers that, for the peace of Europe, the best guarantee
lies in the breaking up of Germany into small states, and its connection
with Prussia being severed. He has a very poor opinion of the security
afforded by the creation of Poland as a buffer state, looking to the mixed
character of its population and the ease with which it can be invaded.
There is an excellent sketch of Belgian history, Belgium being treated as
the type of a composite nationality. But it is to be hoped that the author's
description of the present position of his country is not warranted by the
facts. On the contrary, recent reports would lead us to believe that
Belgium is regaining its prosperity. He is in favour of a trial of the Kaiser
as a means of ascertaining the truth, and as an * impressive demonstration
that international justice is henceforth a concrete reality.' This to be
the note of the New League.
Dr. Sarolea, in looking forward to the future success of the League of
Nations, evidently relies much upon American action. But since this
book was published America has rather exhibited a disposition to abandon
its interest in European affairs and return to its former state of isolation.
Upon the whole, it may be questioned whether the writer has succeeded
in overcoming the obstacles which he has himself set forth to a successful
establishment of this association of the nations.
W. G. SCOTT MONCRIEFF.
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR. By A. F. Pollard, M.A.,
Litt. D., Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Professor of English
History in the University of London. Pp. viii, 411. Crown 8vo.
London : Methuen & Co. 1920. ios. 6d. net.
LR. POLLARD'S History has not room to deal with the achievements of
individual regiments. It deals with armies. But, in his hands, that does not
lessen its attraction. It is an account of * the broad and familiar features '
240 Pollard: Short History of the Great War
of the war. In a note the author hopes it may be a relief to a public * dis-
tracted by the apologetic deluge which has followed on the peace ' to find
how little these features have been affected. His hope is justified. He is
neither politician nor soldier, but an experienced historian trained to sift the
essential from the superfluous, and master of the art of lucid and just narra-
tion. His work is condensed, but, for its purpose, complete ; and conden-
sation is so skilfully managed that the reader is insensible of it. Beside its
firm and impartial structure the * apologetic deluge ' evaporates. One could
hardly wish the story better told. We who lived through the war recall
and confirm, with a better intelligence, as we read. And we read with
ease and satisfaction, for arrangement and style are admirable. 'So such
things should be.'
Mr. Pollard finds room for apt and illuminating criticism ; for brief but
clear and convincing discussion of the designs which brought about the
war ; the incidents of which its promoters made use j the objects of each
important movement, and the reasons of its success or failure ; the char-
acters and fortunes of the leaders, political and military ; the strategy, the
tactics, the sometimes good, sometimes deplorable, staff work ; the terrible
tale of the battles ; the enormous influence of mechanical and chemical
science — hitherto not generally recognised — and the < alphabet of annihila-
tion ' which the Allies had to learn in order to break the German lines.
The book throws light upon things still unsettled — Italy's claims, for
example. If her sword was worth the Treaty of London of April, 1915,
her help was limited to the prosecution of her own territorial ambitions,
and she allowed German intrigue and Bolshevist propaganda to bring dis-
aster to her armies. Again : for Mr. Pollard the war was virtually won in
1916, before the defection of Russia or the decision of the United States to
take part, for Germany's success had reached its climax and the tide had
turned, and Germany knew it and began to manoeuvre for peace. But
Russia's shameful surrender was not only balanced by the American rein-
forcement. It removed an entanglement from the peace settlement. For,
had the Russian empire survived, it would have claimed Constantinople,
the Dardanelles, Poland and much territory on the Baltic, on the Black
Sea and in the Balkans ; and * the great war of liberation would probably
have resulted merely in the substitution of Russia for Germany as a greater
menace to the independence of the little nations and the peace of the
world.'
It has been said that no historian worth his salt, from Thucydides
downwards, is without bias. If there is a trace of it in Mr. Pollard, it is
only enough to add piquancy to his writing. It cannot impair his credit.
This history is well fitted to be a text-book, and has nineteen most useful
maps and an ample index. ANDREW MARSHALL.
ARCHAEOLOGIA AELIANA. Third Series. Vol. XVI. Pp. xxx, 229. 410.
Printed for the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 1919.
A GOOD variety distinguishes this volume for 1919. Mr. J. C. Hodgson
describes the manor of Ovington on the Tyne, a Balliol holding, and
traces the family descents from the forfeiture of John Balliol ; edits letters
Archaeologia Aeliana 241
of Richard Neile (1562-1640), bishop of Durham from 1617 until 1627,
and archbishop of York from 1632 until his death ; and draws up a
catalogue of Newcastle goldsmiths. The industrious vice-president has
only one real rival as a contributor : this rival is Mr. C. H. Hunter Blair,
whose editing of the late Canon Greenwell's catalogue of seals at Durham
fills fifty pages of compact heraldic lore and biographical information.
Scottish ecclesiologists will welcome the fact that the present instalment
includes close upon a hundred Scottish ecclesiastical seals, episcopal and
monastic. Noteworthy among these are : No. 3599, Bishop of Brechin
(A.D. 1254); No. 3610, Bishop of Moray (A.D. 1204) ; No. 3616, Bishop of
St. Andrews (A.D. 1167), No. 3631, Bishop of Whithorn, with a specially
interesting secretum (A.D. 1248); No. 3659, Abbey of Dunfermline
(A.D. 1200); No. 3678, Priory of St. Andrews (A.D. 1204); No. 3679,
Priory of St. Andrews (A.D. 1207). There is probably nowhere else so
wonderful a collection of Scottish church seals as that at Durham, and
the critical industry devoted to the catalogue has been well spent toil, for
which our Scottish fellow-students owe most hearty thanks to Mr. Blair.
Mr. John Oxberry offers some short editorial comments on the Diary
of Major Sanderson in the year 1648, whereby to reconstitute, from a
few itinerary notes, the major's personality in days when king's men and
parliament men were in arms. Mr. Oxberry also contributes a notice
of Richard Welford (1836-1919), a tireless antiquary, literary historian,
and book-lover, of Newcastle, whose many books, pamphlets, and essays
furnish a copious bibliography of the activities of a busy half-century.
To some men it falls to win the affectionate regard of their fellow-workers,
and Mr. Welford belonged to that happy class, as his bust in the public
library attests.
Professor Allen Mawer discusses a handful of place names, bringing
some light to bear on dark places. His readiness, voce Haltwhistle, to
accept hybrids is, however, a bad principle. The note on Gamelspath is
very unsatisfactory. As for Gateshead, why don't the philologists try
to place it at the head of some prehistoric * gait,' some offshoot of the
Roman Way, instead of tethering it as Beda did to a most improbable goat ?
GEO. NEILSON.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY. Vol. XXXV. Sect. C.
No. 9. H. J. Lawlor and R. I. Best. The Ancient List of the
Coarbs of Patrick. Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co. Ltd. 1919. is.
IN these proceedings the object of the authors has been to present a list
more perfect than has hitherto appeared, the earlier publication of Dr.
Todd not containing a print of the Irish text, while that of Dr. Whitley
Stokes, published in 1887, was not apparently taken from the ancient
manuscript. Doubtless this new edition will prove satisfactory, and there
is also a very valuable and learned discussion on the points raised by the
list itself. The subject is of profound interest to students of the ancient
Irish church.
W. G. SCOTT MONCRIEFF.
242 Mumford : Manchester Grammar School
THE MANCHESTER GRAMMAR SCHOOL, 1515-1915. A Regional Study
of the Advancement of Learning in Manchester since the Reformation.
By Alfred A. Mumford, M.D." Pp. xi, 563. With Nineteen Illus-
trations. London : Longmans, Green & Co. 1919. 2 is. net.
THE object of this book may best be stated in the author's own words.
It is an attempt * to consider the way in which a collegiated ecclesiastical
body established in the time of the Plantagenets ; a Grammar School
founded for 'godliness and good learning' in the time of the early Tudors;
a town library established and well endowed during the Commonwealth ;
and a succession of Nonconformist academies, ultimately giving place to
a provincial University in the latter half of the nineteenth century, have
acted and reacted on each other, and have succeeded in arousing a zeal
for truth, justice, and beauty, which has moderated the absorption in the
purely self-regarding instincts, so readily fostered in a large commercial
town.' Dr. Mumford approaches his subject from the point of view of
the biologist rather than of the historian. For him the school is a living
organism, the conditions of whose growth can be ascertained only by one
who 'knows something of the soil which surrounds its roots or the
circumstances of its early development, as well as the atmosphere which
it breathes and the source whence it derives its stimulation.'
While, therefore, the school is his central theme, the author, as he traces
its history from its foundation by Hugh Oldham in 1515 to the completion
of its quatercentenary, studies its growth and explains its progress by
constant reference to the great religious, industrial and international move-
ments which throughout the four hundred years under review fundament-
ally affected English education. He shows us how its foundation
significant of the spirit of the sixteenth century, that period of rapid social
and national transition, when the old learning of the Middle Ages
passing, owing to the rise of a middle class with new aspirations and
conscious of new needs. He explains how the school, and the North of
England generally, were affected by the spirit of the Elizabethan age
and by the religious controversies of the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries
and by the widening of intellectual interests due to increasing wealth and
the intercourse with foreign lands which followed in the train of inter-
national trade.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century it had lost touch with the
most liberal and enterprising members of the merchant classes owing to
its continued neglect of science and modern languages, and at the same
time it was failing to provide training for the unprivileged industrial classes.
In 1860 Mr. F. W. Walker was appointed High Master and at once set
himself to create new ideals and traditions. Physics and Chemistry were
introduced into the curriculum, and an attempt was made to stimulate
the pupils to increased social activities. A new board of governors
sanctioned by the Endowed Schools Commissioners in 1876 secured the
representation of various public interests. New buildings were erected
and a modern language department was created. Under Mr. Walker's
successors the school made rapid progress. While constant attention was
paid to cultural elements, new courses were introduced to meet the growing
Moncrieff: The Song of Roland 243
demands of modern commercial and industrial life : occupational training
was introduced : a medical officer was appointed, and more strict attention
was paid to the physique of the pupils. At the same time through scholar-
ships the school was thrown open to boys of all classes and creeds, and a
successful attempt was made to break down the barriers of caste prejudice.
The book is a valuable addition to the history of education. It is a
mine of information, a hard book to digest, all the more so because the
subject-matter of the valuable appendices, extending to eighty-eight pages,
are not included in the table of contents or in the index. The latter,
though it extends to ten pages, is quite inadequate ; but the mass of
material makes a full index difficult. The book is well illustrated.
JOHN CLARK.
THE SONG OF ROLAND. Done into English in the Original Measure by
Charles Scott Moncrieff. With an Introduction by G. K. Chesterton,
and a Note on Technique by George Saintsbury. Pp. xxii, 131.
8vo. London : Chapman & Hall. 1919. 7$. 6d. net.
To translate an archaic piece well it is perhaps necessary for the translator to
be steeped in the archaism, as, for instance, Dasent was in rendering Nial's
Saga. But a poem is far harder to render than a prose story, and in the
case of the Song of Roland to maintain the succession of assonances requisite
to counterfeit the original measure is a trying experiment. Mr. Scott Mon-
crieff is not an archaeologist, and the prefatorial countenance shown him by
Mr. Chesterton and Professor Saintsbury equally eschews the antiquities.
The song without its archaeology is thus imperfectly presented, albeit a trans-
lation largely made in the trenches in France can set up stout defences.
One who has had the poem in his armoury for thirty years is apt
to be impatient with literary exercises, more occupied with the experi-
ment of form than with the epic feudalism of which the Song of Roland is
so great, albeit so untechnical, an expression. As a translation in general
this new version has decided merit ; it is spirited, ambitious, dignified and
readable. Doublets like Carle and Carlun (the latter usually and correctly
as an accusative) are used for variants as in the original ; the assonances
are fairly well in hand and the line for line principle has its virtues. But
fidelity is sacrificed very often. Some sort of archaeological scheme was
necessary, but in this respect the translator is inconsistent. For instance,
the curious epithet 'averse' applied to the pagans is not treated as a
constant and technical term ; the distinctive place of the horn raises the
question whether the graile was not an absolute synonym ; perrun, a rock
or stone, can hardly be a terrace (as it afterwards became) ; recreancy in
various forms is not treated as an incident of trial by battle ; the feudal
significance of commendation escapes notice ; the * hilt ' of a spear is surely
uncommon name ; * culvert J an untranslated transfer from French to
iglish, badly needed a note ; * galleries ' (line 2625) is an odd rendering
'ga/ies' ; adjurnfe (line 715) does not mean the 'day of doom.' Over
ill, however, Captain Scott Moncrieff has come through an ordeal of
:ril with considerable success. A simpler vocabulary would often have
:rved better, e.g. lines 15, 511, 1467, although it must be owned that the
244 Annual Report of the American
Song of Roland is not simple ; it is a deep poem, the religious orientation of
which, with its piercing strain of high patriotic emotion, surprising at that
early time, leaves one wondering how far M. Bedier's theories safely link it
with the pilgrimage-cycles of romance. With an archaeological setting as
good as the metrical, with a competent discussion of the date, place and
origins of the poem, and with a historical analysis, which is perhaps the
very first necessity, this rendering would excellently meet the require-
ments of an introduction of this great French poem into English literature.
It is a task which Captain Scott Moncrieff may worthily make his goal for
that second edition for which both literary and historical criticism can well
afford to wait. GEO. NEILSON.
ANNUAL REPORT OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE
YEAR 1916. In Two Volumes. Vol. I. Pp. 507. Royal 8vo.
Washington : 1919. Vol. II. Correspondence of Robert M. T.
Hunter, 1826-1876. Pp. 383. Royal 8vo. Washington : 1918.
A GREAT sheaf of history is garnered in these yearly bulletins, which not
only record the activities and conferences of the Association and its inter-
connections, but also include solid contributions to research and criticism.
The pieces thus embraced in the present two volumes typically mix the
ancient and the modern in their themes. This refusal to recognise a
dividing line between classic and current, between Byzantium, China of
the eleventh century A.D. and the correspondence of a southern senator
in the American Civil War, is justified by results : we turn to widely
separated leaves of history thus brought together, and find them the better
and more refreshing for the contact. Paul van den Ven's question on
the origin of the Byzantine Empire and civilisation is a sustained argument
for A.D. 326 for the beginning, as against Professor Bury's position that
no Byzantine Empire ever began, and that the Roman Empire did not
end till 1453. A further phase of the eastern problem is discussed by
A. H. Lybyer in his essay on * Constantinople as capital of the Ottoman
Empire.' He treats the Turkish conquest as a very vigorous foundation,
applauds the scholarship as well as the architecture of the city, and con-
cludes that in many ways Turkish Constantinople has been great. A
particularly interesting line of observation is taken about the Dardanelles.
* The trade routes,' says this critic, * which cross at Constantinople are
potentially among the very greatest in the world. There is probably no
more pregnant phase of the great world war than the struggle of the water
route through the Bosphorus against the land route between Berlin and
Bagdad.' The supplementary study by Wallace Notestein on the quality
of R. S. Gardiner as a historian adds several indications of insufficiently
worked sources on the many unsolved problems of King and Commons
in the Stuart period, and maintains, contrary to Gardiner's trend, that
in 1628 and 1629 the Commons were not regaining old lost trenches
but thrusting forward into new. Roland Usher too, who has been prominent
in recent adverse scrutiny of Gardiner, writes a note insisting on the need
for better study of the history of the common law in England. He
declares that not its real history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
Historical Association for the Year 1916 245
but only the ideas about its history entertained by contemporaries, have
passed into what is an erroneous legend. Also he urges the need of a
re-edited text of the Commons' Journals. In ' Historic Ideals in Recent
Politics,' Joseph Schafer presses the significance of the early colonising
ardours, and seeks the source of American democracy as intertwined with
the self-help requisite under frontier conditions. He considers that as
regards the occupation of land the modern tendency is to approximate
European conditions, albeit the Americans have 'not yet adjusted their views
to tenantship. A. H. Shearer surveys bibliographically the historical
periodicals of America, including that surprising item the Magazine of
History, 1877-1893, 'out of which Mrs. Lamb is said to have made
money.' The second volume consists mainly of letters written almost
all before the war to R. M. T. Hunter, a secessional Virginian senator
who played respectably an insignificant part in affairs. A few letters
of his own are in the collection, which is nearly silent on the convulsion
of 1861-1866. He lived long enough to fall out with Jeff". Davis in 1877,
and a year before he was projecting a life of John C. Calhoun. But his
touch with political contemporaries, confederate or federal, never appears
as either influential or dramatic.
THE FAITH OF A SUBALTERN : Essays on Religion and Life. By Alec
de Candole, Lieutenant in the Wiltshire Regiment, killed in action
September 1918. Pp. xi, 92, with Portrait. Crown 8vo. Cambridge:
At the University Press. 1919. 2s. 6d. net.
THIS is a remarkable little book, and is of interest not only to theologians,
but to students of history. It brings out clearly the points which have in
the past divided the Church and its officers from a large proportion of the
laity. And if the spirit which imbues these pages, and is the outcome of
the war and all that it has meant, finds wide acceptance amongst leaders
of thought, this book may mark a turning point in the history of the
Church. It is of course only one of many works which denotes a revolt
against the close clinging to tradition, and the magnifying of what seem
to many the unimportant points in Christian teaching. But it is remark-
able in its breadth of outlook and in the reverence with which it deals
with points which have proved matter of controversy for two thousand
years. Whether or not the future history of the Church will be affected
seriously by the lessons of the last five years we cannot yet say ; but few
works have appeared which more clearly show the present tendencies and
the possibilities of future development.
CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE. Preliminary
Economic Studies of the War. Royal 8vo. London : Oxford
University Press. 1919-20.
*HESE statistics, collected as * Preliminary Economic Studies of the War '
id printed by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, will be
welcomed by historians. They are not all of equal value as they are of
lifferent dates. Two were printed before the Peace and so must neces-
rily be of a c preliminary ' character. One of these is that on Labour
R
246 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
conditions and the other deals with ' Disabled Soldiers and Sailors.' Two
deal with Britain alone in the aspects of her War Administration and the
thorny question of 'Labor Conditions.' In the former the working of
D.O.R.A. is contrasted with the 'defence' of the Kingdom under Queen
Elizabeth, and Pitt's war legislation. The study on the Effects of the War
on Agriculture in the U.S.A. and in Great Britain is specially valuable,
for, as the Editor points out, ' never before in the history of War has the
food question played so large a part as in the present World War.'
The most interesting of the series, however, is the account of the
Direct and Indirect Costs of the War. Here one can read of the financial
position of each country at its outset, and one is gratified to read that
* to anyone who doubts the responsibility of Germany for bringing on the
War, a study of the financial measures prior to, and immediately following,
the declaration of War, must bring conviction that it was carefully planned
and provided for.'
BUCHANAN, THE SACRED BARD OF THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS : HIS
CONFESSIONS AND HIS SPIRITUAL SONGS. With his Letters and a
Sketch of his Life. By Lachlan Macbean. Pp. 224. Post 8vo.
London : Simpkin, Marshall & Co. 1919. 5s. net.
THE Editor has supplied us with this book, as he felt that a metrical
translation of the Laoidhe Spioradail was wanted, and he gives it to us
in not undignified English rhymed verse. He also contributes a short
life of the writer. Dugald Buchanan was born in 1716 in Balquhidder,
his father being a miller at Ardoch. It is odd to find him so distinguished
that at twelve years old he was made a family tutor. Then he came to
Edinburgh, and after a period of gaiety became a carpenter and fell under
the influence of George Whitefield, who preached in Scotland in 1742.
The Rising of the '45 touched him little, until his clansman the Laird
of Arnprior was hanged, which was a crisis in his life. He threw himself
into the movement for educating the Highlands and started a school at
Balquhidder. His school gradually got recognition, civilised the wild
people, and did much good. He published his poems in 1767, and died
a few months later. There was almost an armed conflict for his ashes,
but his saintly character prevailed, and they were buried in the kirkyard
of Little Leny of Balquhidder. The book is a tribute to the memory
of a great Gaelic writer.
Dr. W. P. Ker's studies in unstudied preparation for the Chair of Poetry
at Oxford perhaps rarely found a happier platform from which to expound
them than when he lectured at the Sorbonne last year on Sir Walter Scott.
First printed in the Anglo-French Review (August 1919), this discursive
criticism, notable for its manv comparisons, has now been issued (MacLehose,
Jackson & Co., 1919, pp. 20) as an independent publication. The subject
was suggested by Sir Walter's visit at Paris in 1826 to the Ode"on to see
the opera of Ivanhoe, when he was struck with the strangeness of hearing
words which at least recalled what he had dictated, in agony with spasms,
at Abbotsford seven years before. Showing what Scott gained by giving
Current Literature 247
up verse for story-telling, Prof. Ker analyses his humorous dialogue, with
a superb illustration in Dandie Dinmont's consultation with Counsellor
Pleydell. There is emotion as well as grace in the lecturer's closing
acknowledgment of the honour done in allowing him, as he styles it,
' to speak in Paris however unworthily of the greatness of Sir Walter
Scott.' Professor Ker's selection for the Chair at Oxford has received
wide approbation in England, and Scotland gratefully appreciates the choice.
Among publications by the British Academy, two papers have European
themes. One by Professeur G. de Reynold bears the title Comment se
forme une nation: la Suisse sa terre et son histoire (pp. 8, price is. net). It
is a rather rhetorical summary of the historic processes which made
Switzerland a unity, but its object is to point out that the Sw'iss, Ifke
other people, are meeting a new world now and need the sympathy of
Great Britain. The address is a * heroic salute of the Alps to the sea.'
Lieutenant-Colonel F. de Filippi writes on The Relations of the House of
Savoy with the Court of England (pp. 22, price 2s. net). This biographical
account, which has six portraits from a Turin gallery, is a notice of the
historic ancestry of the reigning house of Italy. A third publication has
a still wider sweep of theme : it is Viscount Bryce's address, the Raleigh
lecture, on World History (pp. 27, price 2s. net). It arrays the world-
making forces, that is, the unifying tendencies — conquest, commerce,
religion, the proletariate, philosophy — as well as the processes of union —
absorption and fusion. Along with convergence Lord Bryce sees diver-
gence ; but the number of tongues and peoples has decreased. He refrains
from attempting the estimate of remote futures, and will not scale what
Lucretius styles the flammantla moenia mundi. But he asks great questions.
Will Europe's intellectual primacy endure ? Is Liberty still marching ?
Is there Moral Progress and a rising standard ? He hints that some
reactionary symptoms may bring what meteorologists call a transitory
depression. It is a noble address, delivered as it were on Pisgah.
The French Quarterly for October (Manchester University Press,
price 35. net) has (i) D. Parodi's survey of contemporary Philosophy in
France ; (2) E. Ripert's sketch of the Provencal renaissance, starting
from the middle of the eighteenth century and culminating in F. Mistral ;
and (3) J. Bury's notice of a modern poet and man of letters, Ren£ Boylesve,
which assigns him a specially representative quality as un t/moin de la vie
fran^aise. In other papers J. M. Devonshire estimates the force of the
wave of popularity of Scott in French translations down to 1834 ; H. C.
Lunn collates sources used by Theophile Gautier ; and H. Magden tracks
Pierre Bench's debt to Rider Haggard. The bibliography for the quarter
is a very serviceable guide.
Communications
SHEER-CLOTH'D (S.H.R., xvii. p. 156). As the document in
which this word occurs was preserved by one old friend, and has been
edited by another, it is not inappropriate that I should add a note on its
meaning, which is obscured by the unusual but not unique form in which
it appears. That it is a variant of { cere-cloth'd ' is proved by the following
examples of the noun * sheer-cloth ' (in the sense of * cere-cloth '), which
are noted in the Oxford English Dictionary and the English Dialect
Dictionary : —
' When her body should be wrapt in sheer-cloth, they should in no case suffer
her linens to be taken off.' — 1675, in Select Biographies (Wodrow Soc.), vol. ii.
P- 5°6-
1 Wrapping in shear cloath, oyle, poulders, and perfumes, and the chirurgeon
attendance.' — 1692, in Macgill, Old Ross-shire (1901), p. 152.
' Ane accompt off the Laird of Balnagowns ffuneral charges . . . imbowelling
. . . and sheer cloath.' — 1711 ibid.
' Sheer-cloth . .., a large plaster; what is also called by country -people a
* strengthenin' plaster.' — 1887, T. Darlington, Folk-speech of South Cheshire,
P- 337-
In the latter sense * cere-cloth ' was in use from the sixteenth to the
nineteenth century.
With a slight variation, the form occurs at a much earlier date than
any of the above examples, viz. in the account of the death of Henry V.
contained in one continuation of the Brut.
1 And thanne was his body enbawmyd and dight with riche Spicerie and
oynementis, and closid in shire clothe, and closid faste in a che»te.' — The Brut or
the Chronicles of England (E.E.T.S.), vol. ii. p. 430.
Although the verb * cere-cloth ' is rarer than the noun, three examples
(in different senses) are given in the O.E.D., and one of these is relevant
to the present case : —
'The body of the Marquis of Dorset seemed sound and handsomely cere-
clothed.' — 1658, Sir T. Browne, Hydrotaphia, ii. 31.
In view of the above examples, there can be no doubt that Robert
Watt's coffin had a lining of cere-cloth as well as of * white crape.'
W. A. CRAIGIE.
Old Ashmolean, Oxford.
Last Days of Clementina Walkinshaw 249
THE LAST DAYS OF CLEMENTINA WALKINSHAW.
Clementina Walkinshaw, Prince Charlie's mistress, on her flight from him,
received from the Emperor Francis I. the title of Comtesse d'Albestroff,1
and on the adoption of her daughter, Charlotte Stuart, by her father, who
created her Duchess of Albany, retired first to Paris and then to Switzer-
land, where, on her daughter's death, she lived on a pension paid in
accordance with her daughter's will by the Cardinal York. The Coutts'
MSS., edited in The Life of Thomas Coutts^ Banker^ by Mr. E. Hartley
Coleridge, cast some new light upon her latter days and also on the
character of the Cardinal.
The Comtesse d'Albestroff lived ' chez La Veuve Friond, pres de
St. Nicholas, at Fribourg in Switzerland' in 1793, and Thomas Coutts
the Banker, in London, kept up a friendly correspondence with her. He
was in Scottish fashion, through his relations the Stuarts of Allanbank,
the Setons of Touch, the Walkinshaw Crawfords of Crawfordland, her
* cousin,' and he felt all the obligations of kinship. * The unhappy affairs
in France ' rendered her position and circumstances ' very cruel and
distressing,' and Mr. Coutts wrote ist April, I794,2 telling her that he had
used his influence with Monsignor Erskine, ' lately appointed auditor of his
Holiness the Pope,' to help her 'in regard to the Cardinal,' no doubt
concerning the pension which Cardinal York was charged to pay her, and
which was already in arrears. On loth August, 1795,3 he sent her twenty-
five guineas (the first of many remittances), and wrote : * It made Mrs.
Coutts and my daughters very happy to hear you was in good health, tho'
we were much mortify'd with the behaviour of the Prince Cardinal, who's
High Birth & misfortunes should make him feel more for others.'
On the 4th August, 1796, Mr. Coutts wrote a letter to William
Wickham, Esq., to recommend the Comtesse. c She is,' he wrote, * born
of a very respectable family in Scotland and I am confident will always be
found in every respect deserving of your protection.' He kept her supplied
with money and news about his family from time to time. In January,
1799, she was, in spite of the war terrors, still at Fribourg, and we find him
writing : * May Heaven give you the comfort which this vile world denies.'
On a6th December of that year, dating from Bath,4 he sent her twenty-five
guineas with this news : < I have had the pleasure to hear that His Majesty
with His usual goodness has extended His bounty to the Cardinal Duke
and that Lord Minto, Minister at Vienna, has been ordered to pay him
£2000 & to assure him He will receive the same sum half-yearly that is
four thousand pounds a year. Surely He cannot refuse a small degree of
Humanity towards you — when he is receiving it so liberally himself, from
our most amiable and best of Kings.'
On the 1 5th July, i8oo,5 he was forced to write, however, sending the
usual sum : * I have always been in hope to hear that the Cardinal on
1 Ruvigny's Jacobite Peerage, p. 1903.
2 Life of Thomas Coutts, vol. ii. pp. 33-54.
id. pp. 67, 69. *Ibid. p. 109.
pp. 113-4.
250 Last Days of Clementina Walkinshaw
receiving from our most amiable Sovereign a very liberal allowance of Four
Thousand pounds per annum, had ordered your Pension to be regularly
paid — and even that He might have ordered me to pay it to your order out
of the sum he receives from this Country.
I think you should write him a letter stating that you know the generous
allowance made to him from England and implore his justice and generosity
to make you an allowance out of it, adding that 'tho' you are almost
forgotten in England, yet still you have some friends left there, to whom
you may represent the hardship of your situation. That you hope He will
prevent the necessity of your doing so by writing to Mr. Coutts Banquier
de la Cour a Londres to pay your small annuity out of the allowance made
to His Eminence — as it must make His Eminence appear in a bad light to
refuse such a triffle to the Mother of the Duchess of Albany, especially as
he inherited all her effects & was charged with the support of her Mother,
who is now distressed and languishing among strangers in a foreign land.'
The Comtesse wrote later to say that she had heard that the Cardinal
had refused * The Bounty of England,' but Mr. Coutts corrected this on
1st January, 1802 1: 'you may be assured you have been misinformed &
that His Eminence has received it regularly — at two payments in the year,
each of them two thousand pounds. He is always sollicitous to have it,
and I believe his agent Mr. Sloane at Rome sometimes has advanc'd the
money by anticipation.
I receive it here and am now assured of receiving £2000 in a few days.
The period of payment being the 5th of this month. He might surely out
of such a sum pay your pittance 1500 livres — which you inform me he
offers, he reduces to 500 livres, & even that triffle perhaps does not pay
punctually.
His conduct is shameful and cruel.'
Had it not been for Mr. Coutts' remittances, which amounted at least
to £50 a year, the poor Comtesse would have been in sad straits. On
1 6th November, 1802, he wrote again, sending her her money, and ended
his letter2 with the criticism : 'The Cardinal Duke must have outliv'd all
sense of shame.' Clementina Walkinshaw died in the same month and
year. She died aged and poor, but bequeathed to her kind benefactor,
Thomas Coutts, a small gold box ' comme petit gage de ses bontes pour
moi.'
Among the Coutts' papers there is, in addition, a curious note3 of
* Money generously sent by Thomas Coutts Esq. to my poor Grand
Mother, the Countess of Albestroff,' amounting from 1795 to i6th
November, 1802, in all to 250 guineas. The note ends '^262 10 shs.
which amount my strongest desire is to repay. I have however every
reason to believe that more money has been paid to my grand-mother, and
I hope, one day to come to be able to know and settle the whole. R.'
Who this grandchild could be might be a mystery were it not for a
letter from Thomas Coutts' daughter, Lady Bute, to her father, igth
September, 1815,* which gives her account of his origin. 'I am
1 Life of Thomas Couttt, vol. ii. p. 130.
2 Ibid. p. 142. *lbid. p. 142-3. 4 Ibid. p. 333.
Last Days of Clementina Walkinshaw 25 1
most happy you approve of my having refused to lend money to
Le Baron Roehenstart : he is a gentlemanlike man, very like Madame
D'Albestroff. It seems his mother, the Duchess D' Albany, married Mons.
Roehenstart.'
The Duchess of Albany (through a marriage to a Prince of Sweden,
Adolph, Duke of Eurhes, Gothland, brother of Gustaf III., was once
talked about and who in consequence saw many Swedes) mentioned neither
marriage nor child in her will, naming only her intimates, her household,
and her uncle the Cardinal. The Cardinal she made her heir, but
provided for her mother, to whom she desired an annual pension of fifteen
thousand francs to be paid for her life, with the power of disposing at her
death of fifty thousand francs in favour of her necessitous relations.1 A
Swede, Charles Edward Stuart Baron Rohenstart, who at the age of
seventy-three was killed by a coach accident in Perthshire, 28th October,
1854, and buried in Dunkeld Cathedral, claimed, it is said, to be a grandson
of Prince Charlie, and, as we have just seen, perhaps was so. It does not
seem, however, that his mother ever acknowledged him or that his grand-
mother left any memorandum about his origin. Clementina Walkinshaw,
indeed, in her will, made the following pathetic note about her Scottish
kin only : * To each of my relations should any of them still remain I give
a Louis, as a means of discovering them.' * A FRANCIS STEUART(
SCOTTISH MIDDLE TEMPLARS. (S.H.R. xvii., p. 103.)
To Mr. Bedwell's list the Editor appended some interesting notes. The
following biographical details are submitted as a further contribution :
1615. John, Earl of Cassilis.
The fifth Earl. Died 1616.
1671. Alexander Blair.
Was this a son of the well-known Covenanting minister, Robert
Blair of St. Andrews ? The Rev. Robert Blair had a son named
Alexander. See Scott's Fasti.
1713. David Cannady.
Died at Ayr, 1754.
1775. John Richardson.
Oriental scholar. Published Dictionary of Persian, Arabic and
English, 1777.
1822. William Hugh Scott, second son of Hugh S. of Harden. The
father, Hugh S., was at the time chief of the Scott clan, and
afterwards Lord Polwarth. See Lockhart's Life of Scott.
1839. William Campbell Gillan.
His father, Rev. Robert G., was minister of Hawick, 1789-1800.
1840. William Weir.
Journalist. Editor of Daily News, 1854-8.
xWill of the Duchess of Albany, Miscellany, Scottish History Society, vol. ii.
PP- 433-456.
1 Dennistoun's Memoirs of Sir Robert Strange, ii. Appendix vi. p. 324.
252 Scottish Middle Templars
1862. Alexander Kennedy Isbister.
Educational writer. Master of Stationers' Company's School,
1858-82.
1869. Patrick Blair.
Afterwards Sheriff-Substitute at Inverness.
George Smeaton (1863), John George Charles (1864), John Brown
Thomson (1868), and Julius Wood Muir (1869), were all in the
Indian Civil Service.
Charles Erskine (1733) and A. K. H. Boyd (1842) were both admitted
at the age of seventeen.
JOHN WARRICK.
The
Scottish Historical Review
VOL. XVII., No. 68 JULY, 1920
Dunstaffnage Castle
THE historic Castle of Dunstaffnage, it is hardly necessary to
say, stands on a small peninsula on the south side of the
entrance to Loch Etive. Various explanations of the name have
been given. In the Latin of Buchanan it takes the form of
Stephanodunum — that is, the Dun of Stephen — possibly the most
foolish of them all. Another and more popular one was the Fort of
the Two Islands. This is less foolish for, while nobody ever heard
of Stephen, there are two small islands in the mouth of the loch.
But it is not easy to understand why a fort on the mainland
should be called the Dun of the Two Islands, especially as one of
them has a dun of its own.
A more satisfactory explanation, however, is given by Professor
W. J. Watson.
' The first part of the word is the Celtic word Z)««, meaning a
fort. The latter part staffnage is a slight corruption of a Norse
compound word stafness or staff-an-ness, meaning the staff
>int. Ness is applied to promontories jutting into the sea
nongst other things. There are numerous examples round
ic coast of Scotland of Ness applied to promontories. Staff"
leans a staff of wood ; there is no doubt about that. But
ic exact occasion on account of which the place was called
Staff point is doubtful. The Norsemen often used to give
names to places from quite trivial incidents. On one occasion
a place is called Combness from the fact that a lady lost her
Fib there ... My view is that there was a place called Staff-
I.H.R. VOL. XVII. S
254 J. R. N. Macphail, K.C.
ness, and when the fort was built there it was called the Dun
of the Staffness.'
An old form of the name is Ardstofniche, and in this connec-
tion it is not immaterial to notice that on the north side of the
entrance to Loch Etive near the famous Beregonium there is
Ard-na-Muicknish, another compound name which also fits in
well with Professor Watson's view.
Some 1 60 yards south of the castle is a ruined chapel, now used
solely as a place of burial, of which the origin and dedication were,
until lately, quite unknown.
It is curious that the castle chapel should be outside the castle
at all, and it is still more curious that it should be such a distance
from it. But there seems to be an explanation and an interesting
one.
The foundation of Dunstaffiiage is attributed by Hector Boece
to King Ewin, who reigned in Scotland before the Christian era.
Boece, who was a native of Angus and became the first Principal
of King's College, Aberdeen, in 1 505, has long since ceased to be
regarded as an authority, though many of the fictions which he
relates were not his own invention. There seems no special
reason for believing that there ever was a king of Scotland named
Ewin or that he built Dunstaffnage. But it would be foolish to
assert that all the traditions preserved by Boece are unfounded
or to deny that in the present case there may have been some
petty king or kings who in early days had a stronghold there.
Then Boece goes on to say that in Dunstaffnage was the famous
marble chair — the Stone of Destiny. Brought, so the story goes, by
Symon Brek, from Spain to Ireland, it was then taken to Argyll by
Fergus and placed in Dunstaffnage, where it remained till Kenneth
Macalpin, the first king of both Scots and Picts, transported it to
Scone in Gowry, about the year 850. Time need not be wasted on
observations on the Stone of Destiny or on the narrative of Boece.
Suffice it to say that in Dunstaffnage Castle the place where it had
been was once solemnly pointed out to the present writer ! There
may also be seen in Pennant's Tour (p. 354), 1785, the engrav-
ing of an ivory image dug up in the castle which he says ' was
certainly cut in memory of this chair and appears to have been an
inauguration sculpture — A Crowned Monarch is represented sitting
on it with a book in one hand as if going to take the Coronation
Oath.' Other opinions as to this interesting object have, how-
ever, prevailed, and it is now recognised as a chessman of
Norse design. But the old legends cling to the spot, and
Dunstaffnage Castle 255
Dunstaffnage is still called a royal castle, as if it were like Edin-
burgh or Dunbarton.
It is thus described by Messrs. Macgibbon and Ross in their
classic work, The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland?
Dunstaffnage Castle ' stands near the point of a low-lying penin-
sula jutting out into the sea at the entrance to Loch Etive and is
about four miles distant northwards from Oban. The peninsula,
about half a mile in length, is about 700 yards in width at the
neck, uneven and diversified on its surface, and well wooded.
The site of the castle is a rocky platform, rising from twenty
to thirty feet above the general surface of the ground, with
precipitous faces, that along the north front overhanging con-
siderably. The walls follow the outline of the rock, and are
built sheer up from the edge so as to allow no foothold on
the rock outside.
* In plan the Castle is rudely quadrangular, with great curtain
walls, from nine to eleven feet thick, and about sixty feet high from
the ground outside to the top of the battlements, or twenty-
five feet high from the parapet walk to the courtyard inside. At the
east and west ends of the north front are round towers ; over
these this front measures about 137 feet. At the meeting of the
south and west fronts the wall is rounded, and slightly projected
beyond the west face only, along which the castle measures about
112 feet. At the south-east corner, where the entrance is, there
is a twofaced projection — one face parallel with the east front and
the other set on diagonally and connected with the south front
by a solid round in the re-entering angle. Along the south front
the walls are about 68 feet long and along the east front about
100 feet. . . .'
At the entrance there is an oblong building — * mostly in the
style of the sixteenth or seventeenth century . . . The battlements
which are in a ruinous state, have evidently been altered for guns.
. . . The quaint eighteenth century house along the north curtain is
two stories high.' It is thus obvious that changes or repairs have
been made from time to time. ' About 1 60 yards south-west from
the castle is the chapel. It measures 90 feet 7 inches long by
26 feet 6 inches wide and is divided into nave and chancel. . . .
Inferring from its details, the erection of the chapel may be assigned
to about the year 1250 ; and there is every probability, and
almost certainty, that the castle is of the same age, and built by
the same men.'
1Vol. i. p. 85 et seq.
256 J. R. N. Macphail, K.C.
Who these men were admits of little doubt. On the death
of Somerled in 1 164, his dominions were divided among his sons.
Dougal, the eldest son, got Lome, that is to say, the coast of
Argyll from Knapdale to Lochleven, and founded the house
known as De Ergadia or Argyll. His son and successor was
Duncan, whose son again was Ewin, known also as King Ewin,
and his son was Alexander.1
It is pretty certain, therefore, that the Castle of Dunstaffnage
described by Messrs. Macgibbon and Ross must have been built
by Ewin de Ergadia, probably the King Ewin of Boece, or by
Alexander, his son. This Alexander of Argyll married a daughter
of Comyn, Lord of Badenach, and aunt of the Red Comyn, who
was killed by Bruce at Dumfries in February 1306.
Between Bruce and the whole Comyn connection, including
Alexander de Ergadia and his son John of Lorn, there was thus
a blood feud, which accounts for their inveterate hostility to the
King.
That hostility nearly resulted in the destruction of Bruce after
his defeat at Methven in the following June. But later on he
finally routed the men of Lome in the Pass of Brander and took
Dunstaffnage. According to Fordun :
' Eodem anno [1308] infra octavas Ascencionis beatae Virginis
Mariae idem rex Ergadiensis devicit in medio Ergadiae et totam
terram sibi subegit, ducem eorum nomine Alexandrum de Argadia
fugientem ad castrum de Dunstafinch per aliquod tempus inibi
obsedit, qui eidem regi Castrum reddidit et sibi homagium facere
recusans, dato salvo conductu sibi et omnibus secum recedere
volentibus in Angliam fugit et ibidem debitum naturae persolvit.'
Lome and its great fortress thus passed into the hands of the
King, who for some reason did not pull it down, as was his
general practice, but stocked it with provisions and put a garrison
therein.
Barbour, who gives more details than Fordun, makes this
quite plain : (x. 112).
' The King that stout wcs, stark and bald
Till Dunstaffynch richt suddanely
He past, and segit it sturdely
And assailyeit, the castell to get.
And in schort tyme he has thame set
In sic thrang, that tharin war than,
1 This has been disputed, e.g. Clan Donald, vol. i. p. 64, but without sufficient
reason. Cf. Skene's Highlander! tf Scotland, 2nd edn. p. 41 1 (Dr. Macbain's notes).
Dunstaftnage Castle 257
That, magre thairis, he is van ;
And a gud vardane thair-in set,
And betaucht hym baith men and met
Swa that he thair lang tyme micht be
Maigre thaim all of that cuntre.'
This statement is corroborated by entries in Robertson's Index
of Missing Charters, which tell how Arthur Campbell received the
constabulary of Dunstaffnage and the mains thereof whilk Alexander
de Ergadia had in his hands.1
In 1368 King David II. confirmed a charter of his father,
Robert I. to William de Vetere Ponte, dated at Dunstaffnage on
October 2oth and the fourth year of his reign. By some strange
mistake this has been cited as evidence for David II. having been
at Dunstaffnage. But it is correctly given with his usual accuracy
by Lord Bute as showing that Robert I. was there. The fourth
year of his reign began 2yth March, 1309, and ended 26th March,
1310, so this charter proves that he was at Dunstaffnage on
2oth October, 1309, thus throwing light on his movements at
a time when we know very little of them.
The Castle no doubt remained in the King's hands for a
considerable period.
The forfeited John of Lorn had a son Alan, who left a son
John.2 This John the younger married Joanna Isaak, daughter
of the Princess Matilda, the younger daughter of Robert I. and
Thomas Isaak, and had restored to him a great part of the family
inheritance. Of this marriage there were two daughters, Joanna
and Isabella, who married two brothers, sons of Sir Robert Stewart
of Innermeath and Durrisdeer. By a family arrangement Jonet
and her husband Robert Stewart the younger brother excambed
Lome for Durisdeer with John Stewart the elder brother and
husband of Isobel, who on April 19, 1388, received a crown
charter of the lands * de lorne de benachir de loch et de Apthane
1 There is another entry of a charter to the same Arthur Campbell of ' the three
penny land of Torrinturks in Lorne with many other lands.' These unspecified
lands are given in 'the copy of an old inventory at Inveraray as follows : 'The 3d.
lands of Torrinturkis within the bounds of Lorn id. land of Loursolios zd. land
of Letter-nan-ella with the isle thereof 6d. land of Glenrinness 3d. land of
Blarhallachan and Blarnanenheimach (? Blarnaneirannach) 4d. land of Achana-
kelich and Auchinvachich zd. land of Kilmore 2d. land of Auchinafure id.
land of Dunollach 3d. land of Ardstofniche near to Dunollich in a free barony '
. . . * the 3d. land of Ineraw the 3d. land of Achnaba the 5d. land of Ferlochan
the 3d. land of Achendehach within the bounds of Benderloch.'
Highland Papert (Scot. Hist. Soc.), vol. i. p. 75 ; vol. ii. p. 148, note I.
258 J. R. N. Macphail, K.C.
ac de lesmore' — i.e. Lome, Benderloch, Appin, and Lismore.
This charter, which does not appear in the existing Register of
the Great Seal, is still extant at Inveraray. On the death of John
Stewart Lord of Lome in 1421, he was succeeded by his son
Robert, who in turn was succeeded by his son John * Muireach,'
i.e. the Lepper.
This last John Lord Lome, it is noted in the Auchinleck
Chronicle, in the Parliament of I2th June, 1452, 'talyeit all his
landis to the male surname ' * (p. 48). He had three daughters
married, respectively to Sir Colin Campbell of Glenorchy, Colin,
first Earl of Argyll, and Arthur or Archibald Campbell of Otter.
The universal tradition is that by a Maclaren of Ardveigh he
also had a son Dugald, born after his wife's death, and therefore
younger than any of the daughters ; that he was desirous of
legitimating that son by marrying his mother, and sent for her
and her son to DunstafFnage ; and that on the way from the
castle to the chapel he was, in December 1463, stabbed by one
Alan M'Coul. Before he expired, however, the marriage, it is
said, was duly celebrated, and the legitimacy of young Dugald
fully secured.
To go back for a moment. On the death of John Macalan
MacDougal, the restored Lord of Lome, the heir male of the
house of Lome was his brother Alan MacDougal, or in Gaelic,
MacCoul. There may possibly have been some trouble with the
clan, on the passing of the Lordship from the chief to a south
country Stewart laird. But a considerable extent of Lome seems
to have remained in the possession of members of the old family,
and in particular in 1451 John McAlan Vic Coul received from
John Lord Lome a charter (probably a confirmation) of Dunolly
and Kerrera, and other lands south of Oban, along with the office
of bailie of Lome and a curious grant of the * alumniam et
nutrimentum ' of his heirs.
This John had two sons, John Keir MacDougal, his successor, and
Alan, known as Alan of the Wood. This Alan became mixed up
with the Lord of the Isles and the Earl of Douglas in their intrigues
with Edward IV., and seized his brother and chief, and imprisoned
him in the Island of Kerrera. According to the Auchinleck
Chronicle'. 'The yer of God 1460 the Erll of Ergyle Colyne
Cambel passit in Lome, for the redempcioun of his cosing John
Keir of Lome the quhilk was tane by his brother Alan of Lome
JThe Tailzie is contained in a crown charter of 2Oth June, 1452. Reg.
Mag. Sig.
Dunstaffnage Castle 259
of the Wood, sister son to Downe Balloch.' * (It is to be observed
low the designation of Lome still persists, though the Lordship
had been acquired by the Stewarts.) « And schortlie this Erl
forsaid with his oist come to the ile of Kerewra quhar this Alan
had his brother in festynans. And his entent was to destroy
him that he mycht have succeedit to the heretage. And
schortlie they come sa suddanlie upon the forsaid Allane in the
said ile that he mycht nocht pass away with his schippis in the
quhilkis war an hundreth men and this said John Keir was bound.
And his men was slane to the noumer of 4 or 5 score and brynt
thar schippis and redemit his cosing and restorit him to his
lordschip. And the tother chapit richt narrowly with his lyfe
and 4 or 5 personis. And this Was the first slauchter eftir the
deid of King James the Second' (p. 58).
As James II. was killed in August 1460, this slaughter must
have been after that date. On Alan's death shortly thereafter
another Alan, an illegitimate cousin, took his place as a mischief
maker, and extended his operations to the Lord of Lome.
It is said by Hume of Godscroft that the Earl of Douglas had
to take refuge with the" Lord of the Isles at Dunstaffnage, but
this is a mistake. At that time the Lord of the Isles had nothing
to do with Dunstaffnage, and the Stewart Lords of Lome were
not likely to give Douglas shelter or countenance. Moreover, in
the Auchinleck Chronicle it is clearly stated that he met John Earl
of Ross and Lord of the Isles in Knapdale (p. 54).
It has been suggested that this murder of Lord Lome was
instigated by the Campbell sons-in-law. But there is no direct
evidence to this effect, and on the surface it is difficult to see
what motive they would have had. Their wives, on whom
suitable provision had been made on their marriage and who were
also the heirs of their father's fee simple lands were not
entitled to Lome. That lordship was a male fief entailed
on John Stewart Lord Lome and the heirs male of his body,
whom failing Walter Stewart his brother and a whole series of
substitute heirs, and the only effect of the murder of the
Lord of Lome was to pass on that great Lordship to his
son if legitimate, and to Walter and the other heirs if he were
not. So far, therefore, it is difficult to see what advantage
the Campbell sons-in-law could hope to derive from the murder
of the father of their wives. On that footing it would rather
1 Le. Donald Balloch Macdonald of Isla. This shows that John M'Alan Vic
Coul had married a daughter of John Mor Tannister.
26o J. R. N. Macphail, K.C.
seem that the murder arose out of some of the troubles of the
time — not unconnected, perhaps, with the attempts of the Lord
of the Isles and the Earl of Douglas to overturn or curtail the
power of the Crown. Still, however, there is the persistent
tradition, and there is also a deed in the Register House which
certainly shows that before the murder Argyll and Walter Stewart
were apprehensive that Walter's right of succession was in danger,
and were prepared to maintain it by force. As the deed is.
apparently not at all well known, it may be well to give the
official summary in extenso. It is an indenture made at Innisc-
trynich on Loch Awe :
4 Indenture made at Inchdrenich the iith day of December
1462 between Colin Earl of Ergyll and Lord Cambel on the
one part and his cousin Walter Steuard, apparent heir of John
Steuard Lord of Lorn, whereby inter alia the said Earl binds
himself and the heirs of his body to help and defend the said
Walter Steuard and his heirs male against any revocation
reversing or changing of the Tailzie made by the said Lord
John to any other persons except said Walter, and if the said
Lord of Lorn should be induced to revoke and reverse the said
Tailzie, the Earl obliges himself and his heirs to help and support
the said Walter Steuart as far as law will ' agains al tham lyffis
or de may,' the king and queen and other lords to whom he is
already bound excepted, and to uphold and defend the said Walter
in all lawful matters, causes, actions and quarrels. And the said
Walter Stewart on his part, as apparent heir foresaid, has given
and agrees by charter and sasine to give to the said Earl and his
heirs one hundred merks of land lying within the Lordship of
Lorn to be held of the said Walter and his heirs for one penny
blench, being all the lands lying between the waters of Aw and
Etyffe, with the half of all the fishings of both waters, and the
rest of the said hundred merks worth to be given together in
Lome, beginning at Ordmaddy and Achynasawll ay and until the
rest is made up, or else in Beantraloch alltogether in the most
competent place, and also 20 merks worth of land in the Sheryfdom
of Perth called Kyldonyn, lying within the barony of Innermeth ;
also in blench, a charter of the said six score merks of land to
be given to the said Earl and his heirs within 40 days after the
said Walter has taken sasine of the said Lordship of Lorn,
highland and lowland, and, failing due performance, shall give
an obligation in the strictest form for payment of 4,000 merks.
And the Earl further, with consent of Esabell Stewarde, Countess
Dunstaffnage Castle 261
of Ergyll, his spouse, gives up all claim he or she has, or may
have, to the tailzied lands of Lorn, high and low, then in posses-
sion of the Lord of Lorn. Attested, the copy remaining with
Walter Steward, by the Earl's seal and (the other copy), by the
seal of Duncan Campbell, Walter having none. Witnesses ;
John Makalister McGillewun and Archibald McEun (? McEuir)
and others sundry. (Reg. Ho. Charters, No. 372.)
It would thus appear that the Campbells and Walter Stewart
may have had after all some motive for encompassing the death
of Lome, and that Alan the outlaw may possibly have been a mere
tool in their hand.
But be this as it may, there is no doubt but that John Lord
Lome was killed by this Alan M'Ccul, and that Alan M'Coul
seized the Castle of Dunstaffnage. This is clearly brought out
by the following passage from the * Minutes of Parliament,
1464-5 :
' Item as tueching the punicioun of Alane M'Coule, quhilk
as cruelyn slayn John Lord Lorn the King's cusing. The Lords
thinks speidful that, als soon as the session of the wedder askis,
the King move in proper persone with his Lords for the inwading
justifying and punyssing of the said Alane and asseyzing of the
Castell of Dunstaffnich, and that he be forthwith put to the home
of party and syne opinly to the King's home. And that notwith-
standing the letters written of befor to the Earl of Ross. The
Lords ordains that new letters be written with the authoritie ot
the King and of Parliament charging hym that he neither supple
support nor resett the saide Alane in the said deds under all the
heast pain et charge ye convict et juries agayn the King's Maiestie
etc.'1
The King, of course, was the boy James III. who in 1460
succeeded his father when nine years old.
It is unnecessary to go into the feuds and fighting that followed.
The result is sufficient — Dugald Stewart got Brae Lome — that is
practically the region between Loch Creran and Loch Leven,
and founded the family known as the Stewarts of Appin.
Walter Stewart completed his title to the rest of Lome, and
in terms of a family arrangement handed it over to Argyll in
cchange for certain lands elsewhere in Scotland, Argyll becoming
-ord of Lome, and Stewart obtaining the title of Lord Innermeath.
From Argyll, as Lord of Lome, Glenorchy received considerable
lands within the Lordship, while Otter, the husband of the third
1 Acts, rol. xii. p. 30.
262 J. R. N. Macphail, K.C.
lady, being a person of too little importance to make himself
effectually disagreeable, seems to have got nothing out of the
transaction.
DunstafTnage thus passed into the hands of Argyll, whose first
Crown charter of Lome is dated I7th April, 1470 — the reddendo
for that great lordship being una clamis — one plaid — at the feast of
Pentecost, i.e. Whitsunday, if asked only. There is no mention in
it of the castle of Dunstaffhage.
Seventy years later, on i4th March, 1540, Archibald, fourth
Earl of Argyll, got a charter incorporating Lome and many other
lands into a new Lordship of Lorn, and of this new and extended
barony and lordship Dunstaffhage is declared to be the chief
messuage. The reddendo which is payable there on the feast
of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, vocat. mydsommer, is now
una clamis vulgo lie mantill — along with one red rose, one pair of
gloves, and two silver pennies — obviously in respect of the other
lands in the charter. Although the property of many of the lands
contained in that charter has been feued out, Argyll is still the
Lord of Lome, and the reddendo is still one plaid, a red rose,
a pair of gloves, and two pennies money at the Feast of St. John
the Baptist in name of Blench duty — if asked only.
On his acquisition of Lome, Argyll, like Robert I., found it
necessary to put a proper * vardane ' into Dunstaffhage. Tradition
says that this was Donald Campbell, the bailie of Glenaray, a
grandson of Colin longatach of Lochow, and tradition is probably
right. But be this as it may, a liferent charter of certain lands
in Strathearn was granted by John Lord Drummond in 1490 in
favour of Alexander Campbell, designed as Capitaneus de Dun-
stafrynich ac ballivus de Glenaray.
In 1 502, Archibald, second Earl of Argyll, who had succeeded
his father in 1493, granted to his kinsman, Alexander Campbell
Keir (or left handed), and the heirs male of his body, certain lands
described as * Omnes et singulas terras nostras de Penycastell dc
Dunstafynche, Penny Achinche denariatam de Gannewane, denari-
atam de Penginaphuyr, denariatam de Garvpengyn, denariatam
de Kilmore, denariatam de Dawgawach, duo decem mercat ter-
rarum de Glencrutten et sex mercatas terrarum de Barranoach-
trach, cum pertinen. Jacen. in dominio nostro de Lome infra
vicecomitatum de Ergile et Lome.'
The reddendo is thus set forth : 'Dictus vero Alexander et
sue hercdes masculi, prout predicitur, in firma custodia custodicn.
ac sine lesione nobis ac heredibus nostris tenen. castrum nostrum
Dunstaffnage Castle 263
de Dunstafynche et semper inibi tenen. et haben. sex homines
probos et decentes cum armatis et armis licitis pro guerris et
custodia dicti castri et sufficien. ostiarium et vigilem ad numerum
in toto octo personarum in tempore pacis et si forsan contingat
guerra. existe. in illis partibus qua patriam vastare contingerit nos
et heredes nostri propriis expensis tenebimur demidiatem hominum
et expensarum in illo nostro castro ad numerum necessarium
pro custodia et firma detentione ejusd. castri. Insuper dictus
Alexander et sui heredes ut predicitur inven. nobis et heredibus
nostris annuatim focalia pro cameris coquina pistoria et le
brouhouse et semper prima nocte pro aula toties quoties nos
aut heredes nostri contingim. ibid. esse. Etiam dictus Alexander
et sui heredes, prout prius dicitur, solven. nobis et heredibus nris
triginta bollas farrine et duas bollas ordei annuatim pro omnibus
exactionibus et demandis.'
It may be convenient to give also a translation of this reddendo
from a vernacular deed dated May 18, 1667. It contains, as will
be observed, certain additional stipulations which do not appear in
the charter of 1502.
'The said Archibald Campbell and his foresaids keeping in sure
custodie and without hurt to us our aires and successors holding
the said Castell of Dunstaffneis and ever keeping and holding
therein six able and decent men with armour and arms sufficient
for war, and keeping of the said Castell and ane sufficient portar
and watch, at least extending to 8 persons in tyme of peace.
And if warr shall happin to fall out in those parts wherthrow
the cuntrie shall hapin to be wasted we and our aires shall be
holden on our own propper charges to be at the half of the
expense to be necessarilie bestowed for the keeping and sure
detaining of the said Castell over and above the saides eight
personnes to be keeped therein be the said Archibald Campbell
and his foresaids on ther own charges as said is. Moreover the
said Archibald and his aires above wren shall be obleist to make
our said Castell patent & open to us and our foresaids at all tymes
when they are requyred thereto. As also shall furnish to us and
our aires and successors foresaid yearlie peats or aldin for chambers,
kitchine, bakehouse and brewhouse, and for the hall also, also oft
and sua oft as we or our aires shall hapin to be ther.
1 And sicklyk the said Archibald Campbell and his aires fore-
saids shall be astricted bund and obliged to sufficientlie uphold
and maintaine the haill house and buildings of our said Castell
)f Dunstaffneis in the samen conditione evrie way as the said
264 J. R. N. Macphail, K.C.
Archibald Campbell does presentlie, or shall hereafter happin to
enter to or receave the samen the fewars and tennents of our
said lands in Lome who were formerlie in use of doing service
to our said Castle of Dounstaffneis being alwayes astricted thereto
in tyme coming for careage of all materialls necessarie for the
upholding and repairing of the samen according to use and woint.
As also the tenants of the f6resaids lands of Pennychastell Penny-
achinie Gannivan Penginaphour Garrowpengine Kilmoir and
Dongarvach doeing also service at the said Castell of Dounstaffneis
als oft as wee or our foresaids shall happen to be ther and as
they shall be requyred thereto with the rest of the fewars and
tennents of our other lands in Lome astricted as said, is conforme
to use and wont. And in lyk maner the said Archibald Campbell
and his aires foresaids payand to us our aires male and successors
above wren threttie bolls meal and twa bolls bear yeirlie.*
Alexander Campbell Keir and his heirs were also made heredi-
tary maors or factors for the country round about, receiving the
office 'quod in vulgari vocatur Marnychti/ and on that account
were taken bound not to marry without the consent of the Earl
of Argyll for the time.
Such were the terms on which Alexander Campbell Keir
received his estate and they remained the terms of his tenure till
modified by the Clan Acts of 1746.
Alexander Campbell Keir was succeeded by his son Angus,
who apparently impressed himself on the popular imagination,
as to this day the Dunstaffnage Campbells are known in Gaelic
as Claim Aonghais an Duin — the children of Angus of the Dun.
It is good to know in these days of change that they still hold
their ancient place. And on his father's death the present
captain was formally invested by the present Duke of Argyll with
the ancestral gold chain and key, worn as their badge of office.
The crest of the Captain of Dunstaffnage is a Castle, and his
motto, appropriately, Vigilando.
Though Inveraray had become the chief residence of the Earls
of Argyll before the acquisition of Dunstaffnage, and though
Inchconnel, the island fortress in Loch Awe, still remained their
chief place of strength under a family of Maclachlan as hereditary
captains, Dunstaffnage was much used by them, especially in
connection with troubles in the Isles, of which there were many.
James IV. in his expedition to the Isles was at Dunstaffnage
on August 1 8, 1593, as we know from his granting a charter on
that date apud Dunstaffynch.
Dunstaffnage Castle 265
During the sixteenth century, however, there is little to note
about the castle, though no doubt it often served as a strong-
hold, as a prison, and as a gathering place for those expeditions
against Macdonalds and Macleans by which the power of the
house of Argyll was steadily built up. It had, however, fallen
into some disrepair, for early in the next century it was found
necessary to repair it. The seventh Earl of Argyll, the well
known Gilleasbuig Gruamach, had found the Swiss-made theology
which had been imposed on Scotland by the Melvilles and their
associates somewhat unsatisfying ; so in 1 6 1 8 to the great annoy-
ance of the King, he had returned to the old faith, and had
been declared forfeited. His eldest son, Lord Lome, afterwards
the well known Marquess of Argyll, was then a boy of eleven,
and for him, as fiar of the estates, these were managed by a
body of Campbell lairds. In 1625 an order was issued by Lord
Lome for * the tenants and heritors fewaris, tenantis, tackismen,
* occupiaris and possessouris of lands and other gentialmen within
* the bounds of Lome to mak service for reparatioun and upholding
' of the Castell and House of Dunstaffness.' And a similar and
even more stringent order was issued by him again in 1636.
That this reparatioun was duly carried out appears from the state-
ments already quoted from Messrs. McGibbon and Ross, and also
from documents showing that from 1644 onwards Dunstaffnage
was used as a magazine of arms and a depot for provisions for
the support of Argyll and his allies. Dated at The Leager near
Ruthven in Badgenoch 9 October, 1644, this order was issued.
' Captain of Dunstaffnag
Being certainly informed that Alexander McDonald1
and his rebellious complices are going to Ardnamurchan, these
are to [direct you on] sight hereof to send [meal] .... beer
and biscat to Inverloche and caus man my gallay and some
other boats to cum along with it — if the bark can cum I desire she
may cum lykeways, but whither by journey or sailing let the meal
cum and tho' the bark carrie it yit let my galay and as many small
boats as can be manned in a suddente cum along lykeways being
cairful to keep themselves from the treachari of the people thair-
about : so in heast I rest your loving Cusin ARGYLL.'
This letter, it may be noted, was written when Argyll was vainly
wandering about after Montrose, who had lured him onwards
1 Alexander MacColl Ciotach, described by Dr. J. H. Burton as Macdonald
Colkitto !
266 J. R. N. Macphail, K.C.
from Aberdeen into the wilds of Badenoch. Another letter of
the same period is also of interest :
* Loving Cusin,
Sieing the bark is come heir with the meal I desire
now that you send onelie about threttie seckis alongis in Auchna-
brekis boat and lat all the rest remaine till my rarder ordours.
In the meantime haist heir all the amunitione, powder, lead
and matches that come fra Glenurquhy and send back this
boatt of Macleanis with it and send some trustie man with it
and some of the sojouris that are coming up to guard it. And
lat it be haisted with expeditioune. Iff this overtake Auchnabrekis
boatt lat the amunition be sent on hir. And howsoevir you shall
not faill to haist both McCleanis boat and your awine sax oared
boat with all possible diligence. And so I rest, your loving
Coosen, ARGYLL.'
Inverlochie, last Jan. 1645.
After the writing hereof I have stayed yor awine boatt and
so send the amunition in the reddiest boatt.'
This, it will be observed, was written on 3ist January. Next
day, February ist, as night fell, a vision was seen of Montrose's
men, and Argyll with other Covenanting leaders embarked on
his galley. In the morning Inverlochy was fought and 1500
Campbells were killed, with Auchenbreck at their head.
One other incident of the same period may be noted. After the
fall of Dunavertie in 1647, and the treacherous massacre of its garri-
son,1 the Covenanters under Leslie attacked Dunyvegin Isla, where
Coll Ciotach MacGillespick, the father of Sir Alexander Macdonald,
was in command. In Turner's words, * Before we were masters
of Dunneveg the old man Coll, comeing fulishlie out of the house
where he was governour on some parole or other to speak with
his old friend the Captaine of Dunstaffhage Castle, was surprised
and made prisoner not without some staine to the Lieutenant
General's honour.'1 He was taken to Dunstaffnage, kept there
in prison for some little time, and in spite, it is said, of the
protests of the Captain of Dunstaffnage, hanged from the mast
of his own galley, which had been placed over a cleft in the rock
beside the castle. According to tradition he asked that he might
be buried 'so near to the place where MacAonghais would be
buried that they might take a snuff from each other in the grave.
1 Yide Highland Papen (Scot. Hist. Soc.), vol. ii. p. 248 et teq.
1 Memoir i, p. 48.
Dunstaffnage Castle 267
When his request was told to Dunstaffnage the latter ordered
him to be buried under the second step at the door of the burying
place, and when they would be burying him that they would step
over Collas grav.' *•
From 1652 to the Restoration the castle was held by a
Cromwellian garrison. Thereafter it was much used by the
ninth Earl in his war with the Macleans from 1674 onwards,
and in 1681 it received considerable repairs.
On the forfeiture of the ninth Earl in 1681 Dunstaffnage
Castle was burned by the Marquess of Atholl, who had been,
let loose to plunder the territories of Argyll. After the Revolution
of 1688 it was to some extent repaired. In particular a roof
was put upon the principal tower, but according to a memorial
sent in 1 704 by the Captain to the Duke of Argyll, * the two
other tours and the office houses were still ruinous and continue
so, and since that time the outer wall, being very old and long
since it was lymed, is riven in very many places and will certainly
fall shortly if not repaired. And since this place has been always
very useful to the Duke of Argyll's predecessors, and the whole
country, it being the only sanctuary against the insults of the
M'Leans M'Donalds and all the other clans, May it therefore
please your Grace to order the reparation of the said houses and
walls, either by procuring mony from the publict or otherwayes
as your grace shall think fit.*
Apparently the place was put in order, for in 1716 it was held
for the Hanoverian Government, and a bill for the maintenance
of the garrison was duly sent in by Angus Campbell, the hereditary
Captain.
In the '45 it was again held for the Hanoverians, and had the
honour of accommodating a very illustrious prisoner, as appears
from the following letter. The writer, afterwards fourth Duke of
Argyll, was distinguished by his humanity from most of the
Butcher's subordinates. Though on the Hanoverian side he never
forgot that he was a Highland gentleman and that the so-called
rebels were of his own race.
' Horse Shoe Bay,
Dear Sir, AuZ' '"' '74«-
I must desire the favour of you to forward my letters
by an express to Invcraray, and if any are left with you let them
be sent by the bearer.
1 Recordt oj Argyll, p. 98.
268 J. R. N. Macphail, K.C.
I shall stay here with Commodore Smith till Sunday morning,
and if it is not inconvenient should be glad to see you. If you
cant come 1 beg to know if you have any men now in garrison
in your house and how many. Make my compliments to your
lady and tell her that I am obliged to desire the favour of her
for some days to receive a very pretty young rebel ; her zeal
and the persuasione of those who ought to have given her better
advice has drawn her into a most unhappie scrape by assisting
the Younge Pretender to make his escape. I need say nothing
further till wee meet, only assure you that I am, dear Sir,
Your sincere friend and Humble Servant,
JOHN CAMPBELL.
I suppose you have heard of Miss Flora McDonald. If
Dunstaffnage is not at home his lady is desired to open this letter.'
This letter was soon followed by another :
4 Horse Shoe Harbour,
c- Wednesday evening.
You will deliver to the bearer John M'Leod, Miss
M'Donald, to be conducted her in his wherry ; having no officer
to send it would be very proper you send one of your garrison
alongst with her.
I am, Sir,
Your most obedient humble Servant,
JOHN CAMPBELL.
To the Captain of Dunstaffhage.'
In the same month the following bill was sent in by the Captain
of DunstafFnage and paid by order of General Campbell.
Accompt due to Neill Campbell of Dunstaffnage.
Upon the breaking out of the late unnatural Rebellion the
Deputy Lieutenants of the Shire of Argyll, of whom Dunstafnage
is one, knowing the importance of the Castle of Dunstafnage
and judging highly necessary to immediately put some men into
it for defending the place as the only safe channel in these parts
for transmitting letters and intelligence to and from and holding
correspondence with the Shipps of Warr stationed on the West
Coast and the garrisons of ffbrt William and Duart, as also the
castles of Elanstalker and Mingary, and they having appointed
the boats on the coast of Lome to be all brought to Dunstafnage
and disabled there to prevent their being used by the Rebells,
Dunstaffnage Castle 269
the said Neil Cambell in complyance to these orders and conscious
of the consequence it was to the Publick service took into his
castle tho' it was his own dwelling house a partie of men and
carryed directly thereto the whole boats on that coast except such
as lay more convenient to be brought to Duart, Elanstalker, or
Mingary Castles, whereby his house became the only resort of
all the troups, expresses, officers and all people passing and
repassing on his Majesty's service in these parts as there were
boats nowhere els.
To the pay of 1 2 men in the said Garrison of Dun-
stafnage from the I5th August 1745 that they
were interd to the service and were paid by the
said Neill Campbell 6d. a man pr. day till the
29th January 1745/6. That a partie of Argyll-
shire levies was ordered there by General Camp-
bell Inde in all 167 days - £50 2 o
To a sergeant's pay during that time at 9d. a day 6 5 3
To repairs made in the Castle, Coall and candle
furnished the guards from the I5th Augt. 1745
till the 26th Augt. 1746, that a partie is still
continued there, all per acct. - 3160
The company of militia which the said Neill
Campbell levied out of his own estate, part of
them being ordered north alongst with the army,
part of them were putt into Elanstalker Castle
and the remainder to Dunstafnage Castle. I
kept only a Capt. and Leutenant for the whole
company when together, and the Leutenant being
stationed at Elanstalker Castle. To the Captain's
pay at Dunstafnage from the 29th Janry. till
the 26th Augt. 1746 at 5 sh. per day of 209 days 52 5 o
3
In 1810 the castle was accidentally burned and has never been
restored since that date.
Some years ago it may be remembered that there was a lawsuit
regarding the ownership of the castle. The late Duke of Argyll
mtended that it still remained his property as Lord of Lome,
rtiile the Captain of DunstafFnage, who, as has been shown,
)riginally held certain lands in the vicinity in return for keeping
lis Lord's castle, maintained that the castle had somehow come
27o J. R. N. Macphail, K.C.
to belong to him. The Lord Ordinary upheld the claim of the
Captain, observing, ' There is now no castle in any proper sense
of the word, but only a considerable extent of ruined masonry.'
This judicial utterance gave rise to the following lines in a
London sporting paper :
* Of Angus John Campbell, the tale will be told
How he fought for a heritage centuries old,
And saved from the grip of Argyll by a twist
The right to a castle that does not exist.'
The Inner House, however, took a different view as to the rights
of the contending parties. And so after four hundred and fifty
years DunstafFnage still belongs to Argyll as Lord of Lome,
and MacAonghais an Duin is still its keeper.
Since that litigation two things have happened. Looking into
the writs produced in that case, the present Duke of Argyll
discovered that the penny land of Kilmore l — given to Alexander
Campbell Keir, and the exact locality of which could not be
traced — is in one document called Kilmorrie alias Claze Morrie.
His unrivalled knowledge of the Celtic dedications in the west
at once enabled him to see the value of this variant, and he
communicated the facts to the Scottish Historical Review, vol. viii.
p. 109. Kilmore, of course, might be the big church, or perhaps
a corrupt form of the big wood, Killiemore. Kilmorrie again might
be the Church of Mary, or the Church of St. Maelrubha. This
saint flourished about 750 ; he preached and founded churches
all over Ergadia, from Melford to Applecross. These early Celtic
dedications generally, if not invariably, mean that they were
personal foundations of the saint. And the matter was clinched
by the alias Claze Morrie. The Gaelic word cladh, which the
scribe rendered daze, means a burial ground, and the actual name
Cladh Morrie is found at Applecross, where, as at DunstafFnage,
the faithful were wont to be laid to rest in ground once hallowed
by the presence of St. Maelrubha.
It is therefore evident that the old chapel, 160 yards from the
castle — and like the castle built by Ewin of Argyll in the middle
of the thirteenth century — is on the site of some much more
ancient building long since crumbled into dust, and was placed
there because the site was already holy ground.
The next thing that happened is this. The Duke found some
time ago a notarial instrument narrating that sasine of the
1 Vide supra, p. 262.
Dunstaffnage Castle 271
Lordship of Lome was given to Sir Colin Campbell of Boquhan,
afterwards sixth Earl of Argyll, on 8th April, 1572 — and con-
cluding with the words, * Acta erant hec super solum terrarum mantis
vocati sendown apud castrum de Dunstaffnage^ i.e. on the ground
of the mound known as the old Dun, at the Castle of Dunstaff-
nage. And the question at once emerged, What was this old
Dun at the castle ?
Knowing as we do that such castles as Dunstaffnage were not
built in Scotland till the thirteenth century, it is obvious that it
probably had a predecessor — of the type on which Dr. George
Neilson has thrown so much light — a mound natural or artificial
with a stockade — not unlike a kraal, to use the African term.
The present thirteenth century castle rises sheer from a rock
into which a stockade could hardly have been driven. It therefore
seemed as if this old Dun might have been the site of the original
stronghold.
The next question was, of course, Where was this old Dun —
can its site still be identified ?
Last autumn the present writer made his way to Dunstaffnage
in the hope of getting some light on the matter. Quite close
to the chapel, which, it will be recollected, is some 1 60 yards south
of the castle, is a natural mound of considerable area, extending
southwards from the chapel, and marked on the ordnance map
(6 inch) as Chapel Hill. It is mentioned by Pennant (i. 355) and
part of it appears in his plate xliii. On the east it slopes up from
the shore of the loch. The other sides are steeper, and in places
faced with precipitous rock. The top is flat. Altogether, it would
afford a suitable site for a fortified camp or rath ; and on the
assumption that this was the old Dun it is easy to understand
why St. Maelrubha built his little church under its shelter.
The distance of the thirteenth century chapel from the thirteenth
century castle and its identification with St. Maelrubha's founda-
tion in their turn seem to support the theory that this mound
was the eminence known in the sixteenth century as the old Dun,
and the site of the ancient Dalriad stronghold where the Stone
of Destiny rested from the days of Fergus till it was removed
jy Kenneth Macalpine to Scone.
J. R. N. MACPHAIL.
The Distaff Side : a Study in Matrimonial
Adventure in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries
A NOTICEABLE feature of histories and biographies is the
.lY. slight attention paid by the compilers to the women of the
families concerned. The achievements of men, their aspirations,
their motives and their characters, are minutely considered and
appraised ; and, as far as is consistent with truthfulness— or the
bias of the writer — success is ascribed partly to the man himself
and partly to the generosity of his father in transmitting the
requisite qualities to his son.
Very little consideration is necessary to lead one to the conclu-
sion that many characters, historical and otherwise, have derived
their dominant qualities from the distaff side — the male parent
having been what is technically known as the c recessive ' factor.
An ambitious, energetic, unprincipled woman married to a douce
ordinary man will certainly transmit her peculiarities to some of
her sons, probably not to all of them. And the history of Scot-
land is largely a function of traits inherited on the distaff side.
A man's wife, also, may ex proprio motu exert a tremendous
influence on himself and his career ; his actions, good or bad, may
be actuated entirely by her. But she, in exercising her influence,
may really be acting, unconsciously, as a representative of her own
family. Many a man, no matter what his position in life or the
age in which he lives, thinks he is taking an entirely independent
course of action when he really plays the part marked out for him
by his mother-in-law. To him history awards the credit or blame
which, if we knew more, are due to her.
Finally, a man's daughters may by their marriages exercise a
marked influence on his career. The most casual reference to the
history of Scottish families shows what care the medieval father,
under the direction no doubt of his wife, exercised in the selection of
sons-in-law. Misreading of Scottish history is often caused by
neglect of the distaff side. In the history of Scottish families, of
The Distaff Side 273
cadet branches as well as of the main line, women played almost
as important a part as the men. By their own and their daughters'
marriages the men of these families bound themselves to certain
lines of policy; and, though it may not always be possible to
determine whether the policy was post or propter feminam, it may
fairly be said that, with their own inherited tendencies and those
of their wives, no other course of action, no different careers could
have been expected.
Women and men, they mutually influenced each other, and
nearly always in the same direction as their preceding generation ;
md they must have known that in their blind adherence to certain
ideals they were often playing a losing game. These women saw
their menfolk killed in battle, attainted, imprisoned and ruined,
generation after generation ; but they appear rarely to have used
their influence to make them change their outlook on life. They
accepted it, though all these misfortunes recoiled on themselves.
Whatever was the custom amongst the general population of
Scotland in the Middle Ages, there can be little doubt the
manage de convenance was the universal rule among the greater
md lesser nobility. Marriages were arranged on business
ines — including in that term political ; and the Scottish baron was
lore interested in the property and political connexions of his
lelpmeet than in her personal charms or character. The Crown
recognised the advantage to itself that resulted from this system,
md bestowed heiresses on its supporters with the same open-
landed generosity as it showed in the disposal of the lands of its
>pponents.
Innumerable examples of this are to be found in Scottish family
listory ; one only may be quoted here, viz. the bestowal of
Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir Nicol Ramsay, by King
)avid, in 1 335, on Sir Alexander de Seytoun, in recognition of the
itter's gallant defence of Berwick. Sir Alexander, in turn, gave
ic lady — and her lands of Parbroath — to his son John.
The system of contracting alliances with the definite object of
icquiring lands or political influence had the obvious defect that,
if the conditions which originally determined the contract were
themselves altered for the worse by the kaleidoscopic changes of
political life, the inducement for the man to be quit of his engage-
ment and to embark on a new venture became overpowering.
The same applied to the women.
Throughout the Stewart regime in Scotland long minorities
occurred at intervals, and the country was governed by regents
274 Sir Bruce Seton, Bart.
whose tenure of office was liable to sudden ending when the reins
of government were seized by a powerful rival. In such circum-
stances there must always have been men who found that, with a
little more acumen or a little more luck, they might have made
choice of a more profitable wife. These men found themselves
under the painful necessity of trying to cut their matrimonial
losses and make a fresh start.
As romance in these matters does not appear to have then
existed, the Scottish nobles were rarely backward in claiming the
assistance of the only institution that could help them in their
difficulty, i.e. the Church ; and, in many families at least, divorce
of successive wives became almost a family habit — each divorce
synchronising with an actual or prospective change of government
or political conditions. Looking back on the history of lead-
ing families of medieval Scotland, it is possible to estimate the
enormous influence on the political activities of the leading men
in the country of their matrimonial arrangements, and to explain
the otherwise inexplicable changes of policy which punctuated their
chequered careers. The obvious difficulty in regard to these
so-called 4 divorces * is the fact that marriage, according to the
Roman Catholic Church, is indissoluble, and when the term itself
is used — as it habitually was in findings of Bishops' Courts — it
implied either nullity, ab initio, on the technical grounds recog-
nised by the Church, or separation a mensa et thoro. Neither
would be regarded as divorce in the modern sense.
Even the term marriage in those days was a somewhat elastic one.
A regular marriage involved consent by both parties, absence of
fraud or misrepresentation by either, proclamation of banns and
solemnisation in facie Ecclesiae. And, normally, the marriage would
be preceded by sponsalia entered into by the parties concerned, or
their parents or guardians, before a priest and witnesses.
But there were other engagements which had all the con-
sequences of a regular marriage attached to them. Sponsalia per
verba de futuro carnali copula subsecuta constituted such an arrange-
ment as voided any future marriage contracted by either party
during the life of the other ; similarly sponsalia per verba de
presenti — which meant that the parties were prepared to marry,
but left the celebration of the ceremony to a future date — consti-
tuted a valid though not a regular marriage.1
1 For a very complete and instructive dissertation on the marriage laws of the
early sixteenth century see the preface to Liber Officialit Sancti Andreae (Abbots-
ford Club).
The Distaff Side 275
Consanguinity and affinity within the prohibited degrees —
whether through a legitimate or illegitimate connexion — voided
a marriage, however celebrated ; and this convenient fact was
taken advantage of freely, not only by men but by women, who
had come to the conclusion that they might have done better for
themselves in the matrimonial market. Out of 170 actions for
divorce recorded in the Liber Officiate Sancti Andreas^ between
1513 and 1553, ninety-two were founded upon an original nullity
on account of consanguinity or affinity.
Scotland, it must be remembered, had few inhabitants, and the
ruling class was numerically very small indeed, and kept at a low
level by constant fighting, assassination and political murder.
Intermarriage among these few families necessarily resulted in an
ever increasing degree of blood relationship in succeeding genera-
tions, which tended sooner or later to make any particular
marriage a matter in which the Church took more than an
academic interest.
An example of such a divorce, followed by remarriage with
another lady of superior political attractions, is detailed below ;
and it casts a lurid light on the part played by the fair sex, some-
times deliberately sometimes unconsciously, in the history of
Scotland. This particular case has been noted by family historians
and peerage lawyers alike as obscure, though the result — deter-
mining the succession of the Earldom of Huntly to a younger
son by a second marriage — is of considerable importance.
About 1408 Sir Alexander de Seytoun (i) married Elizabeth,
daughter and heiress of Sir Adam de Gordon, and thus started the
family of the Seton Gordons, the large majority of whom sub-
sequently dropped the patronymic and became simply Gordons.
Besides the large Gordon possessions in Berwick, Sir Alexander
obtained from the Regent, the Duke of Albany, a confirmation of
the lands of Strathbogie, which had been forfeited long previously
by the Earl of Athol and granted by King Robert the Bruce to
earlier Sir Adam de Gordon. And subsequently, in 1427, he
t, through his wife's mother, Aboyne and Cluny. In the same
ear he was created a Lord of Parliament, with the title of Lord
Gordon.
He was a man of considerable prominence in his time. He
companied John, Earl of Buchan, to France with the force of
:ots troops raised by that remarkable man, and shared in the
victory over the English at Beauge and in the defeat at Verneuil.
~n his return to Scotland he became persona grata at the Court
276 Sir Bruce Seton, Bart.
of James I., and was one of the hostages and guarantors of the
young king's ransom. In 1437, after the murder of James,
he was one of the ambassadors sent to negotiate a truce with the
English.
During this time Alexander was no doubt brought in contact
with that skilful adventurer Sir William Crichton, who had been
a confidant of James I., Master of the Royal Household, and
Keeper of Edinburgh Castle, and, generally speaking, the power
behind the throne.
Crichton's position increased still further in importance after the
king's death. In 1439 he became Chancellor of Scotland, and
was created a Lord of Parliament, and in the following year was
deeply implicated, along with Sir Alexander Livingstone, his
quondam rival, in the murder of the young Earl of Douglas ;
with occasional temporary reverses of fortune he continued to
exercise a dominating influence in the country until his death
in 1454.
Alexander de Seytoun, Lord Gordon, had a son Alexander (ii)>
Master of Gordon, who is the hero of the divorce case.
When seventeen years of age, in 1427, he married Geilis or
Egidia de Haya (Hay), daughter and heiress of Sir John de
Haya of Touche, Tulibothie (Tullibody), Enzie, 'and utheris
grit landes,' a lady to whom, as indicated in the Papal letter
below, he was related ' within the fourth degree of consanguinity.'
As, however, he obtained the necessary dispensation there is no
question of the validity of the marriage.
By this marriage he had a son Alexander de Setoun (iii),
ancestor of the Setons of Touch and the Setons of Abercorn.
Alexander (ii), Master of Gordon, succeeded his father on the
latter's death about 1441. Long before that event, however, he
had observed the rapid rise of Sir William Crichton, and decided
to get rid of his wife and marry Crichton's daughter ; this he
proceeded to carry out.
The date of this affair is uncertain, but it must have occurred
before November, 1438; for in 1436 a charter1 of James II.
mentions Elizabeth Crichton as ' sponsa nobilis domini et potentis
Alexandri de Cetoun, domini de Gordoun.' The forgiving Egidia
Hay, * Lady of Tullibody,' granted him, for his lifetime, all her
lands of Tullibody and certain properties in Banff, and in the
relative charter (Gordon charters) describes him as ' her beloved
kinsman, Sir Alexander de Seton, Knight.'
1 Antiquities of Aberdeen and 5a«^"(Spalding Club), iii. 319.
The Distaff Side 277
This unfortunate and ill-treated lady died some time subsequent
to the remarriage of her fickle husband, but before the Papal
letter of August 13, 1441, leaving a son Alexander (iii), a lad of
about nine years of age.
The divorce of Egidia Hay and the remarriage of Sir Alexander
de Seytoun with the daughter of Chancellor Crichton are facts
which have been long known ; as to the tortuous methods
adopted by him to bring them about there has been no informa-
tion available until recently.
In connexion with questions arising out of the subsequent dis-
posal of his dignities after his elevation to the Earldom of Huntly
a search was made in the Vatican records for documents connected
with the divorce proceedings ; and the following letter, now
published for the first time,1 has come to light :
TRANSLATION OF LETTER FROM POPE EUGENIUS TO THE
BISHOP OF MORAY, dated i3th August, 1441.
lugenius etc. to his venerable brother . . . the Bishop of Moray,
Greeting. Whereas the course of the petition of thy diocese and
lat of Saint Andrews presented to us on behalf of our beloved
m, Alexander de Seton, layman, and of our beloved daughter in
'hrist Elizabeth Crychton, his wife, showed that formerly after
lat the aforesaid Alexander and Egidia de Hay his former wife,
rho were united within the fourth degree of consanguinity, having
)btained a dispensation from the Apostolic See, at the same time
contracted Holy matrimony by the lawful words and consum-
mated it by holy wedlock through the procreation of offspring,
the aforesaid Alexander, asserting the marriage contracted after
lis fashion between himself and Egidia to be null and void on
account of the impediment which arose from the aforesaid con-
inguinity and by reason of a defect in the dispensation of the
said Holy See, which dispensation he denied having obtained and
concealed with malicious intent in his own house, sought that his
marriage with the said Egidia should be declared null and void
and that he should be divorced from the said Egidia :
and, whereas our beloved son Henry Horny, Archdeacon of
Moray, to whom thou, by thy authority as Ordinary, hadst com-
mitted the hearing of this cause and the due settlement thereof,
in virtue of such commission, caused the parties to be cited before
him for trial :
1A printed precis will be found in the Advocates' Library, Papal Letters, vol..
ix. p. 72.
278 Sir Bruce Seton, Bart.
and, whereas, the said Archdeacon, having entered into the said
cause, pronounced a definite judgment against the said Egidia :
and, whereas, the said Alexander, since the said Egidia made no
appeal against this judgment, contracted marriage according to
the legal form with the aforesaid Elizabeth, who was entirely
unaware of the said previous marriage, (the said Egidia being still
alive) and solemnised the said union in the presence of the
Church, and lived with her for some years in the marriage thus
contracted, and continues to do so at the present time :
and whereas the aforesaid Alexander and Elizabeth cannot con-
tinue in the marriage thus contracted between them unless they
obtain an apostolic dispensation therefor :
and whereas this same Petition sets forth that the aforesaid
Egidia hath departed this life, and that the said Alexander, being
pricked in his conscience, is sincerely repentant of the sins com-
mitted by him :
and whereas, if a divorce took place between the aforesaid
Alexander and Elizabeth, dissensions and scandals would be likely
to arise between their friends and kinsmen ;
an humble supplication hath been made to us on behalf of
Alexander, and also of the aforesaid Elizabeth, who, as she
declares, was entirely unaware of the previous marriage, and who
was not in any degree party to the death of the aforesaid Egidia,
praying that we, of our apostolic benignity, would be pleased by
the grace of a fitting dispensation, to free the said Alexander
from sins of this kind, and from any sentence of excommunica-
tion which, by reason thereof, might perchance lie against him
and the said Elizabeth.
We therefore, inasmuch as we have not certain information
concerning the foregoing matters, and seek the peace of all and
sundry and desire to avoid all causes of offence whatsoever, so far
as by the Grace of God we may, for the reasons aforesaid and
others which have been laid before us, being moved by the
petitions in this matter,
Do now charge and command thee, by our Apostolic letters, by
reason of the special confidence which we have reposed in thee in
the Lord in these and other matters, that thou shouldest absolve
the said Alexander, if he should humbly seek such absolution
from these his sins and from any sentence of excommunication
which he may have incurred as aforesaid ; and this absolution
thou shalt grant on this Our authority, for this occasion only, in
the accustomed form of the Church : and thou shalt enjoin him,
The Distaff Side 279
by virtue of an oath which he shall take in thy presence, that he
shall commit no such things any more nor countenance those who
do such things, by aid, counsel, or favour.
And, nevertheless, if it appear expedient to thee that such a dis-
pensation be granted, the said Elizabeth shall not on that account
be 1 : since thou shalt, by apostolic authority grant a
dispensation to the said Alexander and Elizabeth, permitting
them to contract a marriage afresh at the same time, and to
remain lawfully in the same when it is contracted, by declaring
legitimate any offspring born of the said Elizabeth, or which may
be born from the marriage to be thus contracted.
Given at Florence in the year of our Lord's Incarnation 1441
on the 1 3th day of August in the eleventh year.
Arch. Segret. Vaticano Reg. Lateran 368 (alias Eugen iv. 1439.
Anno 9 Lib 116) fol 66 1.
From this remarkable document it is possible to form a fairly
close idea of the course of the tragedy.
It is quite certain that the original marriage between Alexander
and Egidia, though related within the fourth degree, was per-
fectly regular : but the mere fact that Alexander is absolved
from the guilt of having * concealed ' the dispensation * with
malicious intent in his own house ' indicates that he did act
precisely in this manner. Egidia Hay was a young girl, and
an orphan, and may well have been ignorant of the necessity
for a papal dispensation before she could marry ; 2 on the other
hand, Alexander probably concealed the document against a
day when it might be useful to forget he had had such a dis-
pensation, and would get his marriage declared null and void
in consequence.
It emerges then that the Archdeacon granted the divorce
without being aware of the existence of a dispensation ; and the
divorce was in consequence obtained by fraudulent means.
Alexander then took advantage of the silence of Egidia and
married Elizabeth Crichton.
* For some years ' all went well, and a son was born ; and then
Alexander found himself faced with difficulties. In the first place
he was afraid of excommunication ; then he was afraid of his
1 Illegible in the manuscript.
2 The cynical view may be taken that Egidia Hay, in spite of her youth, was
a worldly young woman who, in her desire to marry Alexander, did not trouble
about dispensations or prohibited degrees ; and was herself a party to the fraud.
280 Sir Bruce Seton, Bart.
fraudulent action being found out, and of another divorce which
might lead to unpleasantness with his father-in-law ; and, possibly,
he had already made up his mind to leave his property to his son
by Elizabeth Crichton.
So he applied for the belated dispensation to marry Elizabeth
Crichton, which was given by the Pope. Even then, however,
he lied — for he asserted that Elizabeth ' was entirely unaware of
the previous marriage,' a statement which is incredible. It is
inconceivable, too, that Crichton himself was unaware of Seytoun's
previous regular marriage to a lady of such old family and such
great possessions.
The Pope himself admits that he has not * certain information
concerning the foregoing matters ' ; but indicates that he had
* other ' reasons ' which have been laid before us ' ; and so, to
save a scandal in high life, he granted the request, subject to a
formal remarriage.
Truly a pitiful exhibition of fraud on the part of Alexander
and Elizabeth on the one hand, and of weakness on the part of
the Bishop and of the Holy See.
With Egidia Hay dead and his own and Elizabeth's characters
whitewashed, Sir Alexander's career was now quite straightforward.
On his father's death he became Lord Gordon in 1440 or 1441,
and in 1445 he was created Earl of Huntly.
But again he failed to run straight.
With the concurrence, no doubt, of Elizabeth and the
Chancellor, he decided to disinherit his eldest son by Egidia
Hay, Alexander (iii), in favour of George, son of Elizabeth
Crichton ; and to accomplish this, he surrendered his dignities
to the Crown in 1449, and had them regranted to him — with
the exception of one — in favour of George, who subsequently
succeeded his father as second Earl of Huntly.
This case is not a peculiar one, except perhaps in so far as the
tortuous procedure of the principal character was particularly
unprincipled.
With the upbringing he must have had, George, second Earl
of Huntly, was unlikely to attach much sanctity to marriage vows,
especially when it was to his advantage to do otherwise. He,
indeed, was married three times, and divorced two wives, both
of whom he selected in the first place — or had selected for him—
on account of their family interest, and both of whom had had
previous experience of matrimony. With each he acquired some-
thing to his material advantage.
The Distaff Side 281
Before considering his first marriage it is necessary to go back
a few years.
James Dunbar, Earl of Moray, left two daughters, co-heiresses.
Of these, the younger, Elizabeth, married Archibald Douglas,
brother of the eighth Earl of Douglas. By devious means the
elder sister was ignored, and Archibald became Earl of Moray.
On the murder of his brother at Stirling in 1452, Moray took
arms to avenge his death. Huntly, the first earl, in his capacity
of Lieutenant of the North, happened to be engaged in fighting
* the tiger Earl ' of Crawford ; and, during his absence, Moray
harried Huntly's lands of Strathbogie. After beating Crawford
at Brechin, Huntly was himself beaten by Moray at Dunkinty in
May 1452.
For this Moray was attainted, and his earldom was conferred
upon the Chancellor's eldest son, James Crichton, who had
married the disinherited Janet Dunbar — another example of the
ambition of Crichton. The forfeiture appears to have been
reversed, however, soon after, and Moray then again devoted
himself to the support of his young nephew, the ninth Earl of
Douglas, and was killed fighting the king's troops at Arkinholm,
on ist May, 1455.
Only a few days after Moray's death his widow made a contract
of marriage with the Earl of Huntly's son, George ; both of them
evidently thought she would be allowed to take the Earldom of
Moray with her. In this, however, they were disappointed, as
very shortly after the marriage, in 1455, tne Earldom was again
forfeited to the Crown.
Having failed to secure the Earldom of Moray, and appreciating
that the Douglas family was ruined, the Master of Huntly made
haste to divorce the lady, and, in 1455, advanced the time
honoured plea of consanguinity. Perhaps he had avoided the
mistake made by his father, and had no awkward dispensation
to conceal or explain away. Elizabeth herself, in 1462, married,
for a third time, Sir John Colquhoun. The plea of consanguinity
and affinity appears to have been a more than usually exiguous
one, as it was based on the fact that the son of young Huntly's
uncle, Lord Crichton, his own cousin, had married Janet Dunbar,
sister of Elizabeth.
The Master of Huntly then decided to contract a royal alliance,
and, in 1459, married the Princess Annabella, sister of James II.
In this he was no doubt advised by his parents. Crichton was
dead, and the old earl perhaps felt that it would be very
282 Sir Bruce Seton, Bart.
advantageous for his son to be connected by marriage with
the Crown.
The Princess had previously married the Count of Geneva,
but the King of France, in 1458, succeeded in having the marriage
dissolved ; and the lady was given 25,000 crowns and sent back
to Scotland. Her disposal presented considerable difficulties, and
the king was probably glad of the opportunity to make such a
good alliance for her.
The Master of Huntly's married life continued without any
noticeable incident until 1471, the year in which he succeeded
his father as second earl ; and the Princess bore him four sons
and four daughters. But the inherited tendency was again too
strong for him, and, in the same year, he got rid of his royal wife,
on the ground that she was related in tertio et quarto gradibw to
his previous wife, Elizabeth Dunbar, Countess of Moray.1
The new king, James III., bore Huntly no malice for casting
off his aunt, as is clear from the earl's subsequent career.
Within a month of this second divorce, banns of marriage
between the Earl and Lady Elizabeth Hay, daughter of the
Earl of Errol, were proclaimed at Fyvie ; but the marriage only
took place five years later. It is not possible to determine now
what Huntly's object was in marrying Elizabeth Hay. The
connexion between the two families, however, was not a new one ;
and it continued in later generations.
The Huntly family was by no means peculiar in respect of
their matrimonial vagaries. For instance, another crop of divorce
cases occurred about the same time in the Maule family, and
these too were effected by the Consistory Court of St. Andrews.
Sir Thomas Maule married Elizabeth Lyndsay, daughter of
the first Earl of Crawford, and Maule's sister married Sir David
Guthrie. After some years, and after having borne him several
children, Lady Guthrie was divorced by her husband as being
related to him within the prohibited degrees, and, in bringing
about the desired result, the Earl of Crawford took a prominent
part.
This action on the part of his father-in-law infuriated the lady's
brother, and, as the old chronicler of the family expresses it :
' Thearfor Sir Thomas did tak sic indignatione at the Earle that
he did repudiat his wyf, albeit ane innocent woman, and to quhome
no man could reproche any notoure fault.' She lived long after
1 The statement that the Princess divorced Huntly, made by certain writers,
is evidently incorrect, in view of the wording of the divorce proceedings.
The Distaff Side 283
her husband, but he soon married again and lived happily ever
after.
The seamy side of married life in the middle ages is ruthlessly
exposed by the Records of the Bishops' Courts that have survived ;
and an interesting fact is that, in the claims for nullity, the ladies
of those days were often not too modest in showing cause why
they should obtain release, even at the expense of their own fair
fame.
An example of this, one of very many at the time, is to be
found in the matrimonial history of Ninian Seytoun of Touch,
grandson of the Alexander Seytoun whose mother was the
Egidia Hay above mentioned.
Ninian Seytoun married Matilda Graham. Unfortunately,
this lady, before her marriage, had had a regrettable affair with
the Earl of Montrose, who was related to Seytoun in the third
and fourth degrees of consanguinity ; and thus, at the time of
her marriage, bore the same degree of affinity to her husband.
It was consequently decreed that the ' pretensum matrimonium '
was null and void.1 Seytoun was then free to marry again,
and his choice fell on Janeta Chisholm, widow of Napier of
Merchiston. There was evidently friction between them, and
the lady, after many years of married life, brought a suit for
nullity on the same grounds as were advanced in the previous
case, i.e. that, on account of a liaison with one Andrew Buchanan,
who was related to Ninian Seytoun in the third and fourth
degrees of consanguinity, she herself bore that degree of affinity
to her husband when she married him. So the marriage was
dissolved, and Janeta married Sir James Touris of Innerleith
within a couple of years.2
This Ninian Seytoun's daughter, Margaret, married Daniel
Somerville of Plane, a widower. In July 1544 a sentence of
nullity was pronounced by the Bishops' Court of St. Andrews,
1 Lib. Off. St Andr., fol. 14. The sentence in this case was as follows:
' Ex et pro eo quia dicta Matilda diu ante celebrationem dicti pretensi matrimonii
lit carnaliter cognita per quondam nobilem et potentem dominum Wilhelmum
arnitum de Montrose . . . quiquidem Ninianus et dictus quondam Wilhelmus
: invicem attingebant in tercio et quarto gradibus et sic dicta Matilda in tempore
contractus dicti pretensi matrimonii attingebat sibi Niniano in tertio et quarto
gradibus affinitatis de jure prohibitis.' This is a good example of the acquire-
tient of a prohibited degree of affinity by one party to another through a previous
ipse with an individual who was himself in the prohibited degrees of con-
sanguinity.
1 Ibid. fol. 232.
284 Sir Bruce Seton, Bart.
on the plea of Somerville that his first wife, Elizabeth Elphinstone,
was related in the fourth degree of consanguinity to Margaret
Seytoun, and that she consequently was in that degree of affinity
to him when she married him.1
One of the most striking matrimonial histories of the sixteenth
century was that of Queen Margaret, daughter of Henry VII. of
England and consort of James IV.
To begin with, her original marriage with James was a political
affair, the ultimate object of which was the securing of a stable
peace between the two countries. The negotiations commenced
in September 1499, shortly after the renewal of the Truce of
Ay ton at Stirling, but took close on two and a half years to carry
through. It was necessary to obtain a Papal dispensation for the
union, and, on the day following the signature of the marriage
agreement, 24th January, 1501, the Earl of Both well acted as
proxy for James in the ceremony. The Princess at this time was
only in her fourteenth year. In August 1583 she arrived in
Scotland and the wedding took place at Holyrood.
Left a widow by the disaster of Flodden in 1513, the position
of the young queen was one of great difficulty ; and it is not to
be wondered at that she looked around for some man to help her
in her responsible duties of guardian of the infant king, and
regent of the kingdom. These were already coveted by Albany
and a large section of the nobles, while her relationship to Henry
VIII. did little to commend her authority to the country at large.
In these circumstances she selected as a helpmeet the most
eligible of the Angus Douglases, Archibald, sixth earl, grandson
of ' Bell-the-Cat,' a youth of about nineteen years of age ; and
married him in August 1514. His object in marrying the Queen
Dowager was to obtain the Regency, and to benefit his own
family ; but, having married in haste, he found he was quite
unable to carry out his plans, and, on the landing of Albany in
May 1515, was compelled, with his wife, to take refuge at the
English Court.
Shortly after their departure Margaret had a daughter, the
Lady Margaret Douglas, afterwards mother of the unfortunate
Darnley ; but Angus, anxious to fish once again in the drumlie
waters of Scottish politics, deserted his wife within a year of his
marriage, and made his peace with Albany. Henry VIII., furious
at this treatment of his sister, at once visited his wrath on Scotland,
and finally succeeded in forcing Albany out of the country.
1 Lib. Off. St. Andr., fol. 325.
The Distaff Side 285
In the years that followed the relations between Angus and
Margaret became increasingly strained, and, in 1527, she obtained
a separation * a mensa et thoro \ '
Although such a separation did not permit of a fresh marriage
she immediately married Henry Stewart, subsequently Lord
Methven, who was related to Angus * in IIP et 4 gradibus
consanguinitatis,1 and therefore held the same degrees of affinity
to herself. The facts that she was not entitled to marry again,
and that Stewart and Angus were related in these degrees, must
have been perfectly well known to both parties at the time of
the marriage.
After some ten years of married life, Margaret claimed and
obtained a declaration of nullity of the marriage on the
grounds above stated, and it is believed her intention in doing
so was to remarry the Earl of Angus, now at the zenith of
his power.
This plan did not eventuate, and in 1541, after a life full of
matrimonial excitement vouchsafed to few women, she died at
Methven Castle, the seat of her latest husband.
The cases of divorce quoted above — cases of nullity they might
be more properly called — are merely samples selected almost at
random ; but they show sufficiently clearly what went on in the
leading families of Scotland, prior, at least, to the Reformation.
The records show that a large proportion of cases, of which
details are still available, were based on pleas of consanguinity or
affinity in the prohibited degrees. Generally speaking, it will be
found, if contemporary history is brought to bear on individual
cases, that there was always some reason, apart from mere incom-
patibility of temper, domestic differences, or disregard of the
Seventh Commandment, which was a sufficient inducement to
one or other of the parties to apply for release from the contract
which had become unbearable or even inconvenient ; and this
reason was the superior attraction of some one else, as a possessor
either of wealth or political influence.
The astonishing thing, however, is that — men and women
alike — the parties concerned had no hesitation in pleading impedi-
ments of which they and their kinsfolk must have been perfectly
well aware before they embarked on matrimony ; and this appears
to indicate that per se prohibited degrees of consanguinity and
affinity were not deterrent to any appreciable extent when
weighed against material advantage.
1 Angus and Methven were great-great-grandchildren of a common ancestor.
U
286 The Distaff Side
The part played by the Church may appear to be open to
criticism. In the creation of all kinds of barriers to matrimony
canon law was, no doubt, originally actuated by a perfectly
justifiable regard for eugenics ; but the multiplication of these
impediments defeated its own ends, and produced a demand for
dispensations on the one hand and declarations of nullity on the
other which had to be met. Granted, as these were, on payment
of fees, and with a minimum of inconvenience to the parties, the
indissolubility of marriage became a mere theory which was
negligible in everyday life.
And so it comes about that, in endeavouring to estimate the
part played by individuals on the history of their times, it is
essential, for a right understanding, to take into account the
enormous effect of the distaff side.
BRUCE SETON.
Scots Pearls
SCOTS pearls have a beauty of their own, but their chief glory
is that they decorate the * Honours of Scotland ' (the oldest
regalia now extant in Britain), and are to be found in the gold
circlet with which King Robert the Bruce was crowned. A closed-
in crown was added later, and this was used at the coronation
of James V. and his daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, and the
beautifully designed sceptre has a very large Scots pearl at the top.
It is also likely that Scots pearls must have been used earlier
in royal jewellery, for in 1120 an English church dignitary
begs the Bishop of St. Andrews to get him large pearls ' even
if he has to ask the King of Scots (Alexander I.) who has more
than any king.'1 At a much later date the chamberlain to the Queen
of Charles II. gave her a ' Con way Pearl,' believed to occupy a
place in the British Crown.
Julius Caesar, when preparing to invade Britain, knew of the
pearls to be found in the rivers 2 of Scotland and of Wales (and
probably Ireland). It is known that he was a lover of pearls
and that he dedicated to Venus Genitrix a breastplate studded
with British pearls,3 and that there are references to them in
Tacitus4 and Pliny,5 and thus they would come to be known
throughout Europe.
In 1324, 1338, and 1389 Scots pearls are noted in an inventory
among the English Crown jewels. As early as 1355 Scots pearls
are referred to in a statute of the goldsmiths of Paris, and there
are frequent allusions to them in inventories of the Middle Ages,6
1Wharton's Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. p. 236.
2<Multi prodiderunt (J. Caesarem) Britanniam petisse spe margaritarum quarum
amplitudinem conferentem, interdum sua manu exegisse pondus,' Suetonius,
cc. 46, 47. Cit. Petrie and Sharpe's Monumenta Historica Britannica, p. xlix.
See also Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. i. chap. i.
3 Pliny, Historia Naturalis, ix. c. 57.
4 Agricola, xii. 5 He calls them small and of a bad colour.
6 Comptes de ? Argenterie de France au xiv sieclet pp. 26, 395.
288 Maria Steuart
and they formed an extensive export trade. Aeneas Sylvius, Pope
Pius II., mentions them in his account of Scotland as among the
4 commodities ' exported to Flanders — ' hides, wool, salted fish
and pearls.1
The Dutch merchants knew Scots pearls to be inferior to those
of the Orient,2 but imported them in large numbers, classing
them with those of Bohemia and Sweden. In the latter country
they were greatly esteemed, and there was a large trade with
Scotland for them, and there are references to them in books
of travel. The quantity of pearls used in Sweden must have
been enormous, so that though the Swedes were able to supply
numbers from their own lakes and rivers, they must have been
obliged to augment them from other sources. We read that
the grandmother of Henrik Brahe 3 is said to have had sheets
of silk sewn with pearls — as uncomfortable a thing as can be
imagined in the way of a luxury — and that the dead were buried,
as a mark of rank, with a pearl-embroidered cushion under their
heads. This was a custom in Denmark also, for one was found
in the Earl of Both well's coffin.
When Maria Euphrosyne, sister of King Carl Gustaf of Sweden,
married Magnus, son of Ebba Brahe (the old love of Gustaf
Adolf) in 1647,* she received among her presents a necklace
of Scots pearls, the gift of her mother-in-law. Horace Marryat,
in 1860, mentions that during his residence in Sweden he was
much struck by the quantity of Scots pearls he saw. ' There is
scarcely a family of note in Stockholm who does not possess a
necklace gathered from the Highland Unio. I have sometimes
counted as many as twenty or thirty worn by ladies in the same
rooms — heirlooms inherited from their great-grandmothers.
Though of large size, they are inferior in lustre to those of
Norrland produce.'
The Scots pearl can be traced in old Scottish records,5 although
1 ' Ex Scotia in Flandriam corium, lanam, pisces salsos, margaritas ferri.'
2 Anselmi Boetii de Erodt Gemmarum et Lapidum Historia, p. 85. Cf. also
Account Book of Andrew Halyburton, conservator of the Privileges of the
Scottish Nation in the Low Countries. MS. in 1498 a Scottish merchant at
Middleburg remits a small sum ' to by peril ' in Scotland.
*H. Marryat's One Tear in Sweden, i. 131.
4 Ibid. i. p. 70, n. 122, 465 n. See also p. 24, The pearl fisheries of Sweden
were a royal monopoly.
5 Accounts of the Lord High Treamrer of Scotland, i. The succeeding items are
from the same source, except where noted.
Scots Pearls 289
the ancient ways of spelling may cause the reader surprise. A
' stomokk,' an * eye of gold,' or a c corse,' being interpreted,
represent a stomacher, an eyelet or loop, and a cross.
James IV., like his predecessor Alexander I., seems to have
had many pearls among his 'jowalis.' Amongst other things
* a buke of gold like ane tabell and on the clasp of it faire perles
and a fare ruby.'
* Item in the same box a stomok and on it set a hert of precious
stanis and perle.'
' Item. In a trouch of cipre tre . . . a point maid of perle
contenand XXV perles with homes of gold.'
'Item. Twa tuthpikis of gold with a chenze, a perle and
erepike . . . with other small japis.' Item. * A purs maid of
perle ' which contained among other things * a serpent's toung
sett.' The use of the last must be left to conjecture : it was
probably a charm, but the toothpicks and ear-pick were of practical
value. Then further on may be found a * Sanct Andoues cors
and in it a diamant a ruby and a grete perle.'
* Item a trete of the Queen's owr set with grete perle sett
in fouris and fouris ' and many other * grete perle ' and * perle '
ornaments. For example, * A hanger of gold with twa perle
without stanis.' Were the great pearls exceptionally large and
fine stones and the * perles ' without an adjective inferior or small
ones, like those used for embroidering on velvet and silk ?
The Queen seems to have been fond of pearls, for we find
a bill for ' twa corses giffen be the King to the Quene' and many
other notices. * In the said kist of the Quene's ane string of
grete perle continand fyfti and a perle, and stringis of small perle.'
It is highly probable that many of the 'grete' pearls were oriental,
but many of the smaller must have been Scots from their number,
and, as we shall see later, they are mentioned among the jewels
of Mary, Queen or Scots.
Here is a note of an account in 1 503 :
The XXVII of Aug. To John Currour to mak ane
unicorn of gold to the King three ridaris of wecht iij li. ix s.
Item for making of the samyn - xviii s.
Item for ane perle to hing at the samyn iij s.
Here is another interesting item in the same year, especially
at the present time when so many swords of honour have been
given recently to victorious admirals and generals :
4 A sword of honour and scheith.
29° Maria Steuart
4 Item for perils that wantit to the broudering (embroidering)
of it xiiij s.
4 Item payit to Nannik, broudestar, for broudering of it and
grathing of the samyn iiij li.'
In 1 504 we find paid c to ane preist that del verit perle to the
King, xxiiij s.' Any one curious about the manner of fishing of
Scots pearls during this century will find an account of it with
many observations on their value and dimensions in the Descrit-
tione del Regno di Scotia, by Petruccio Ubaldini, 1 576, an Italian
refugee.
In the time of James V., in 1538, John Mosman, a goldsmith,
has an account :
* To male hornis and buttonis to ane bonet of the Kingis grace set
in perle and precious stanis xviij crounis of wecht weyand xviij li.'
The making and the setting of the buttons of the 4 bonet ' in
4 perle and dyamantis vj li.'
And in the expenses for 4Newar (New Year) gifts,' 4 Ane
quhynzer (whinger) garnist wytht perles quhilk was given to
Monsieur D'Orleance, ijcxlij cronis.'
This M. d'Orleans was the King's brother-in-law, afterwards
Henri II. of France.
Later Monsieur d'Orlean's 4 quhyngzear ' is further embellished
with a * grete perle ' costing 1 8 francs.
Then, too, there is a note which is interesting because the
pearls mentioned in it are specified as being Oriental.
* Item. Given for vjxxv grete Orient Perle price of the pece
viij cronis. Summa jm. cronis.'
There are accounts for pearls bought by the thousand at
104 francs for the thousand, and 'given for viiic-xvi litill perles
price of ilk perle iii summa jcxxij fra viiij s.'
* Item. Given to Robert Crag for ane collar of gold sett with
perle brocht hame by him to the Quene's grace xvij li xii s.'
After the death of the Queen-Dowager Margaret Tudor,
154041, her * perle bedis' were delivered 4 to the Kingis Grace'
in * the littill copburd of siluer.' l
Passing on to the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots, we find : z
' Treize vingtz quattre grosses perles achaptees de Jean Guilbert
Orfevure d'Edimbourg comprins quattre que 1'orfevure de la
Royne a rendu qui estoient dessus une paire d'heures d'or.
1 Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, i. 307.
•Joseph Robertson's Inventoriti of Mary, Queen o/Sfots, p. 89.
Scots Pearls 291
' II a este oste xxvii perles pour envoyer a Paris pour faire
boutons et le reste a este prins pour faire une cottouere qui est
de diamens et de rubiz et chattons.'
As the pearls were got from Edinburgh it is to be presumed
that they were Scots, and a ' cottouere garnished with little
tables of ruby and with pearls ' is in one of the inventories of
Mary's jewels. A cottouere or cotoire was at one time merely
a piece of embroidery applied to a dress, but under Catherine
de Medici the embroidery was replaced by a ' garniture ' of
precious stones on clothes for great occasions, and the embroidery
was used on less important costumes. Queen Mary also had
'ane carcane of perle of gold contenand ijcxx perles, weyand
thrie crounis . . . and for the fassone costing vi li. x. s.' ; probably
these, at this small price, were Scots pearls.1
In 15652 Darnley's 'string to ane bonet set with perles and
stan is ' cost 40 shillings.
Scots topazes and pearls were among Queen Mary's jewels
at Chartley in 1586, when they were sent to Queen Elizabeth
by Paulet, her stern gaoler.8
When the Regent Morton4 recovered some of the Crown
jewels for King James VI. he received in 1573 from Agnes Gray,
Lady Home, 1 5 diamonds in gold enamelled with white * togidder
with ane carcat of perle contenand sevin greit perle and aucht
knoppis of small perle every knop contenand fyftene small perle.'
They had been given ' in gage ' for 600 pounds Scots by the
Laird of Grange when he was raising money for his defence of
Edinburgh Castle.
In 1 58 8-8 15 James Richardson of Smeton received from his
father, Mr. Robert Richardson of St. Mary's Isle ' a cheinze
belt of gold of knottes of perle and fiftie dyamantis ' and seven
great diamonds belonging to the King, and delivered them to
Lord Ruthven the * thesaurer.' Later we learn it had * xxv
knottes of perle' and was delivered at Dalkeith, in June, 1581,
to Esme, Earl of Lennox.
In 1 60 1 6 the King got the Crown jewels from John, Earl
of Mar, including ' a carkant of gold ' set with rubies and diamonds
* and fiftie-twa perles.'
1 Treasurer'' s Accounts, xi. p. 183. *lbid. p. 390.
3 Prince La ban off, Lettres de Marie Stuart, vii. p. 246.
4 Privy Council Registers, ii. 247.
6 Privy Council Registers, iii. 366. 6/£iV. x. 328.
292 Maria Steuart
In 1605 Scots pearls are mentioned in the inventories of the
Treasury of the Exchequer as being in the English Crown jewels.1
In 1608 Lady Buchanan is charged with stealing *Ane perle
to the valour and pryce of ane hundreth and twa pound sterling
. . . togedder with diverse otheris perles.'
Margaret Hertsyde, Lady Buchanan, had entered the service
of the Queen in Scotland, and she and her husband, Sir John,
got rich in England, and on their return seem to have given
themselves airs. She was apprehended as above mentioned for
stealing jewellery valued at about £400 sterling. She confessed
her guilt to the Queen, but then she was accused also of revealing
secrets ' which a wyse chambermaid would not have done.' She
was declared c infamous ' and banished to Orkney, where she had
an estate. In 1619 her doom was altered and the reproach of
* infamy ' removed.
In i6i62 there are letters of David Craufurd, goldsmith,
against ' Certane personis whom he had imployed to fish perles/
and in 1620 the Improvement of Pearl Fishing is the subject
of an Act of Parliament, and in 1621 there is another Act order-
ing that pearls are only to be worn by the privileged classes.
In 1620 we learn that a pearl was found in the burn of Kellie,
a tributary of the Ythan in Aberdeenshire. * So large and
beautiful that it was esteemed the best that had at any time
been found in Scotland.' Sir Thomas Menzies, provost of
Aberdeen, obtaining this precious jewel, went to London to
present it to the King, who, in requital, gave him twelve or
fourteen chalder of victual about Dunfermline and the Custom
of Merchant Goods to Aberdeen during his life.3
This beautiful pearl seems to have drawn attention to the old
reputation of certain Scottish rivers for the production of pearls,
and in 1621 the Privy Council4 commissioned three gentlemen
to protect the rivers and ' nominal expert and skilful men to
fish for pearls at convenient seasons.' One gentleman for the
rivers of Sutherland, another for those of Ross, and the third
(Mr. Patrick Maitland of Auchencreeve) for the waters of Ythan
and Don. The last named was further made Commissioner
* for receiving to his Majesty's use, of the haill pearls that sail
1 Antient Kalendar and Inventories of the Treasury of the Exchequer, vol. iii. p. 286.
1 Privy Council Regitten, x. p. 651.
8 Succinct Survey of Aberdeen, ^.85.
4 Privy Council Rtg'ntert.
Scots Pearls 293
be gotten in the Waters within the bounds above written, and who
will give reasonable prices for the same : the best of whilk pearls
for bigness and colour he sail reserve to his Majesty's own use,'
the King having 'an undoubted right to all pearls as he had
to all precious metals found in his dominions.'
Mr. Patrick Maitland gave up his commission in July, 1622,
and in 1625 one Robert Buchan, burgess of Aberdeen, was
appointed in his place. He was reputed to be skilful in fishing
for pearls and 'hath not only taken divers of good value but
hath found some to be in divers waters where none were expected,'
so seemed a very suitable person to be appointed commissioner
' for praeserving and keeping the whole watteris within the
Schirifdome of Abirdene from untymeous and unseasounable
searching and seeking of pearlis within the same/ and to restrain
all persons except ' special personis of skill and experience,' and
those only to fish * in dew and laughfull tymes in the said monethis
of July and August yeirlie.'
Anyone who was caught fishing for pearls without being
* laughfully ' nominated by Robert Buchan or in the other
months of the year was liable to be punished * by wairding and
laying of thame in the stokkis and otherways at the discretioun
of the said Robert ' and all pearls taken by them confiscated.
Later on Buchan was reported to his Majesty for his good
services, and for < the chargis and expenssis ' that he had incurred
the Council recommended that he should get * fyve hundredth
pundis sterling and above,' but as for the prices of the pearls
which he had presented * alsweel to your Majesty as to. your
Majesty's darrest father of blessed memorie the nomber and
value quhair of being unknawne to us we can give no advise
anent his satisfactioun and recompense,' which is a very cautious
judgment, but hardly likely to have given * satisfactioun ' to
Mr. Robert Buchan.
In 1628-9 Robert Buchan presents a c supplication to the Lords
of the Secreit Counsell/ that he may have warrant to produce
before Magistrates all persons, natives or foreigners, whom he
may ascertain to have infringed his monopoly. Later, however,
in 1631, the Free Burghs complain that liberties anciently secured
to them had been much impaired ' by certain specious overtures
by particular persons who have nothing in view but their own
advantage. For example, Robert Buchan, burgess of Abirdene,
under colour of preserving his Majesty's Waters from the un-
seasonable fishing of pearls has obtained a patent by which he
294 Maria Steuart
appropriates the privilege of fishing of pearls for himself, a
commodity ' which has been ever heretofore customially reaped
by the burrowis,' so that they craved that the patent might be
recalled and the Burghs allowed to follow their former trade in
seeking for pearls and disposing of them.'
In 1632 the King decreed that the monopoly of pearl fishing
granted to Robert Buchan is to be revoked, as Buchan ' under
collour of preserving our waters from unseasonable fishing for
pearl and increasing our yeerlie revenewes,' had taken all the
benefits to himself, ' wherein we respecting the ancient custome
and lawes of that kingdom preferring the generall good of the
publict to our ane particular pretended interest or to the ends
of anie privat persoun, our pleasure is that yow call the said
Robert Buchan befor yow and discharge his patent and all further
prosecution thereby causuing publick by proclamation that all
our subjects have libertie freelie to fish and take pearls in all
rivers and waters in our kingdom for all tyme coming and no
other patent be esped heerupon thereafter.'
Buchan did not relinquish his claim without a struggle, and
it was not till 1641 that his commission fell into abeyance.
After the Union of the Crowns the vogue of Scots pearls
seems to have declined gradually, and in 1705 John Spreull, a
jeweller in Edinburgh, wrote : * I have dealt in pearls this 40
years and more and to this day I could never sell a necklace of
fine Scots pearls in Scotland nor yet fine pendants the generality
seeking for Oriental pearls because further fetcht.'
A traveller in Scotland l about this time mentions ' Mr. Spreull
. . . says he has sometimes given 100 Rex. dollars which is near
^25 for one Scots pearl and that he had Scots pearl as fine, clear
and transparent as any Oriental pearl. Though the latter be
more easily matched because they are all of a yellow water, yet
foreigners covet Scots Pearl.'
Pennant,2 in his Tour in Scotland, 1769, says (in writing of the
Tay pearls which were ' got out of the fresh water muscles ') :
1 Defoe's Tour, with later additions, where there is also a curious account of the
medicinal properties of pearls. ' Though the small pearl be not so useful in
ornament yet they may be of very good use in Physic and make a fine Article in
the Apothecaries Bills, being reputed the chief of all Cordials and very good against
the Plague, violent and pestilential Fevers, Fluxes, Heartburning, Giddiness of the
Head, Trembling of the Heart, &c. which is sufficient to show that the Pearl-
fishery well deserves encouragement since we may be supplied with it much
cheaper at Home than from the Indies'
2 Pennant's Tour in Scotland, p. 88.
Scots Pearls 295
'from the year 1761 to 1764 £10,000 worth were sent to
London and sold for los. to £1 i6s. per ounce. 1 was told a
pearl had been taken there that weighed 33 grains.'
About the same time an Aberdeen merchant, Tower by name,
got j£ioo for Scots pearls from a London jeweller. It is amusing
to learn that he had expected a hundred pounds Scots, which
would be about £8, but the London jeweller paid him in pounds
sterling !
At intervals pearl fishing was revived, and in 1860 a German,
Moritz Unger by name, assisted in restoring it. In 1861 the
Scottish pearl fishings were 'singularly successful,' and in 1865
the produce of the fishing in rivers of Scots pearls amounted to
/i 2,000.
It is pleasant to think that Scots pearls are now again being
worn, and it is to be hoped that not only * foreigners ' but our
own people will ' covet Scots pearls.'
MARIA STEUART.
Social Life in Scotland in the
Sixteenth Century l
FEW persons, it is probable, went through life without re-
quiring at some time or other the services of a notary.
Perhaps the most frequent and ordinary business of those officials
was in preparing deeds in connection with the purchase or aliena-
tion of land. But these need not concern us here, as we are
concerned rather with the personal relations of the community ;
how and under what conditions they lived, how they loved, quar-
relled, married and died. Under most circumstances a notary
was always at hand to help or hinder a man. The only event in
his life at which a notary did not make his appearance was that
of his birth or baptism : no deeds seem to relate to such events.
But with marriages it was very different : obviously a formal
deed like a marriage contract required to be drawn up by a person
of skill, and we find numerous examples of such documents
in the Protocol Books. So early as 1513 there is recorded an
interesting instrument, which relates how a certain Lawrence (his
surname is not given) was contracted to Besseta Ros ; the young
couple were evidently not well off, but the youth had prospects
of being able to maintain his wife suitably before very long.
Meanwhile, her mother in the most complaisant way promised
not only to give Lawrence twenty merks at once, but to keep
him and her daughter in her own house, supplying them with
* drinkables and eatables,' for four years, and the bride's brother,
in addition to becoming security for the payment of the twenty
merks, promised to deliver to Lawrence four cows as his sister's
' natural portion.' It seems to have been a not uncommon
practice for the parents of newly-wedded persons to agree to
give them board and lodging for some time. Thus in 1519
Margaret Tonok in Ayr, about to be married to Gilbert Gibson,
gets £22 as tocher from her parents, who also promise that * they
1 In continuation of article on Clerical Life in Scotland in the Sixteenth Century,
as it appears in the Protocol Books of the period. S.H.R. xvii. p. 177.
Social Life in the Sixteenth Century 297
shall keep her honourably with access and receiving of Gilbert
when he shall happen to stay with them,' and Gilbert's father
gave his son eight merks and also undertook to instal him in
a * malyn ' or farm as well stocked as his own ; he also came
under an obligation to treat the couple well and to sustain them
whenever they pleased. to stay with him. Not only so, but
the parents on both sides bound themselves to ' clothe and
repair their offspring in garments and body clothes according
to their ability.'
Sometimes the obligations in such contracts involved the pay-
ment of money by one of the parties only, the other contributing
something in kind. In a contract between Michael Lyel and his
daughter Mariota on the one part, and Thomas Lessallis and
his son James on the other, it is provided that James should
marry Mariota ' in all guidly haist,' and that he should receive
from the bride's father £40 ' the morn eftir thai be marriet ' and
another £40 at Martinmas of the next year, 1551. The lad's
father made no money payment, but undertook to give the couple
a five years' lease of the ' schaddo half of Pitlour,' to sow for
them ten bolls of wheat, twelve of barley, and forty of oats, and also
at the ensuing Martinmas to give them eight oxen, two horses,
thirty ewes and ten ' outcome ' sheep, two * ferow kye,' that
is, cows not in calf, and one cow the * boyle,' probably meaning
that James and his wife were to be ' bowers ' of this cow from his
father, that is, they would pay him a certain rent for it and
recoup themselves by the sale of its produce.
Occasionally the lady's tocher was rather of an illusory char-
acter, or at least did not come up to the nominal sum mentioned
in the contract. When Christina Cleghorn, for instance, the
daughter of a worthy burgess of Linlithgow, was about to marry
David Binny, her tocher was stated to be £60 Scots, but of this
sum she bound herself to relieve her father of £20 * considerand
the honest damisolis that the said Archibald (her father) hes by
(besides) her that ar to be putt to profitt als wele as sche suld be/
in other words that her other sisters should have the same
marriage portions as herself. What David Binny thought of this
altruistic attitude of his bride is unfortunately lost to us.
There is another rather peculiar marriage contract, also a
Linlithgow one, in which the girl's stepfather and mother
promise to pay over to her future husband half of their goods
moveable and immoveable, surely a disproportionate payment,
seeing that there is no obligation at all on the other side ; on the
298 Sir James Balfour Paul
contrary, the bridegroom, John Thomson, must either have been
very young or very * feckless/ as the girl's stepfather further
binds himself to ' instruct him in all the points of his craft, called
the wabster craft.'
Irregular marriages, per verba de presenti, as the legal phrase
has it, were not infrequent. In these cases there was no publica-
tion of banns or any formal benediction by the Church, although
they were sometimes celebrated by a priest, who however laid
himself open to censure by his superiors. In 1527 William
Cunningham of Polquhairn married Mariota Ross in this left-
handed way, but there was a ceremony before a priest, one
Robert Wilson, chaplain. The latter took the precaution of
getting an obligation from Cunningham and George Ross ot
Hayning, presumably the lady's father, that they would keep
him * scathless at the hands of all ' if he should be called in
question for performing the ceremony without requiring the
publication of banns and in an unconsecrated place. It is not
clear why this marriage could not have been carried out in
the usual way as Ross produced a dispensation for the persons
concerned, the only known impediment to the marriage being
that the couple were within the third and fourth degrees of
consanguinity.
Dispensations from such impediments were extremely common,
indeed the Church made much money out of them. They were
given not only before the marriage but sometimes after. In
1516 Nicholas Stodart and Jonet Mitchell had evidently con-
tracted marriage in some form or other though they were full
cousins and therefore within the forbidden degrees. From the
phraseology of the deed it is probable that a child had been born,
who was of course in the eyes of the Church illegitimate. This
may have been the consideration which moved the parties to
obtain letters of dispensation from the Archbishop of St. Andrews
as Lateran Legate. These letters formally divorced them ' for
a certain space,' and enjoined some kind of penance for their
transgression. The couple then, 4 prostrate on their knees,' pre-
sented the letters to Mr. Robert Hamilton, rector of Covington,
in the church of the Friars Minor in Glasgow, and he, in terms
of the letters, gave an authority to them to contract a new
marriage, and legitimated their children, both born and to be
born. All this was done before witnesses and Hamilton appended
his seal to the document in token of corroboration. This is
a typical form of instrument which occurs frequently in the
Social Life in the Sixteenth Century 299
Protocol Books, though in most cases it is in a shorter form
and the statement as to a temporary divorce is generally omitted.
Occasionally, however, the parties had evidently had enough
of" each other and did not want to be remarried. Thus David
Boyd and Janet Smart, his wife, appeared before a notary at
Linlithgow in 1553, and the man, declaring that the marriage
between them was altogether unlawful * on account of certain
lawful causes,' urged his wife to procure a divorce from him
as soon as possible from lawful judges. The lady denied that
she knew of any cause of divorce, but that she would not stand
in the way of her husband calling her in a suit showing reasonable
cause why divorce should be granted according to divine and
church laws. What the result of this contention was we are not
told, but probably the man got his way!
Children were in these days much more under parental control
than they are, unfortunately, now. John Haigis, the proprietor
or tenant of the Half Mains of Houston in Linlithgowshire, and
his wife grant to their son in 1572 the third rig of the said Half
Mains, and the father promises to renounce the whole of the
lands in his son's favour at Martinmas of the following year.
The son, on his part, undertakes not to marry without ' the
advice and tolerance ' of his parents ; should he do so he loses all
right to the lands.
There was a very curious case of marriage and divorce which
came before Gavin Ross the notary in 1541. Robert Lindsay,
grandson and heir of Alexander Lindsay of Corsbascat, had mar-
ried, at a date which is not mentioned, a certain Janet Stewart of
a family also unnamed. The lady was a very unwilling bride,
and she soon after raised an action of divorce against her husband
before the Commissary of Kilbride. That judge, after hearing
the case, found * that Janet, compelled by force and fear of death,
which might befal a steadfast woman, and coerced by her parents,
she unwilling, mournfully objecting and with grief, contracted a
pretended marriage de facto et non de jure with Robert Lindsay
per verba de presenft, and in the same manner, though by law
unjustly, solemnized her marriage with him in the face of the
Church ; and the said Janet, remaining always in the same
opposition never at any time consented or intended to consent to
the said Robert as her husband, and in token of said dissent
he never had any intercourse with her as in the libel is fully
narrated.' The Commissary then, taking these facts into con-
sideration together with the evidence led, pronounced the marriage
300 Sir James Balfour Paul
null and void, gave to each party licence to marry again, and
ordered any dowry or marriage gift to be returned. Three
months after this decree Robert Lindsay found another bride,
and having been duly proclaimed * on three solemn days, ordinary
days intervening' in the parish churches of Kilbride and Ric-
carton, he was married in the chapel or oratory of his father-
in-law to Janet Ross, daughter of George Ross of Hayning,
a family who, as mentioned above, seem to have had peculiar
experiences in their marriages. What the real history of these
marriages was we do not know. But it is interesting to note
how a girl — forced by her parents into a marriage distasteful
to her — was able, without apparently any support from her
relatives and indeed in opposition to the will of her parents,
to refuse to have anything to do with her husband and to be
successful in obtaining a divorce from him. It shows the Church
too in a favourable light as the protector of women who believed
themselves to be wronged.
There is much information about the ordinary plenishings of a
sixteenth century house in the Protocol Books. In 1514 Andrew
Campbell of Skerrington received from his mother Mariota
Craufurd the following articles amongst others : a caldron or pot
containing twelve bottles, presumably of a size capable of con-
taining the contents of so many, a feather bed, a pair of sheets,
blankets, coverlets of a green colour, a tin disc or plate, a
cushion, a wooden bed with a ' rufe,' in other words a four-
poster, a great ark or chest, an armoire and a clothes horse. Of
course these were not the sole articles of furniture in Skerrington ;
perhaps they were the personal property of his mother and were
handed over by her to her son after his father's death.
There is a very long inventory of the furniture in Calder
House in 1566. It is impossible to specify it in detail, nor is it
likely that the family occupied the house very much ; they seem
to have preferred a dwelling in the burgh of Linlithgow, which
will be referred to hereafter. Still the inventory gives us a good
idea as to how the house of an influential and leading laird of the
country was furnished. The house was a large one, over thirty
rooms being mentioned. The furniture on the whole is of a
strictly utilitarian type. No carpets are mentioned, the floor
either being left bare or partially covered with a few * lyars u or
1 So called because they lay on the floor and were not suspended on the walls
like tapestry.
Social Life in the Sixteenth Century 301
rugs, or more likely simply strewn with rushes ; there are but a
few chairs, their place being taken by forms or stools ; there are
over twenty beds of all degrees, from the stately standing beds of
•carved work with rods and runners (for curtains) down to the
humble ' litigant ' (lit-de-camp) beds, a tautological expression for
a camp bed which was simply a board and bedding supported on
trestles. In one room there are no less than three beds of good
quality, two of them carved and the other ' turnit.' In another
apartment of lower quality there were four ' fyre ' (fir) beds, but
they cannot have been of much importance or have taken up
a great deal of room. The most interesting list is perhaps that
of the furniture of the hall or great living room of the house.
In it we find the * hie burd with twa formis,' that is, the table set
on a dais or ' des ' at the top of the hall, at which the laird and
his wife with any specially favoured friends would sit. Above
the table was set ' ane fair paintit brod,' perhaps displaying the
coat of arms of the family. Then there was a ' myd burd with
twa formis,' which was placed in the middle of the hall, and
at which would sit the upper members of the household or guests
of a lower rank than their hosts ; there were also three ' by
burdis ' with their forms, tables with trestles which were folded
up and put against the wall when not in use. A ' hart horn '
hung on the wall, the only ornament mentioned. There was
a wooden stool and a straw chair from Flanders (little furnifAire
was actually made in Scotland at this period), an iron { chimnay '
•or grate, and * ane irne botkin to runge the fyir,' in other words
a poker. To light this hall there were three wooden chandeliers
(hanging from the roof) with ' fleuris ' or ornaments of white
iron. Such was the simple manner in which the principal apart-
ment of the house of a laird of high degree was furnished in the
middle of the sixteenth century. But this inventory can hardly
have included all the furnishings of Calder House.
We get a greater idea of comfort when we turn to a similar
document relating to Sandiland's town house in Linlithgow.
Here we have not only a sufficient quantity of beds and
bedding, but mention is made of bed curtains of satin, damask,
and other materials, arras hangings for the walls, no less than
thirty-two pairs of sheets, tablecloths, two dozen serviettes and a
great deal of other napery. All this was contained apparently in
a 'Flanders kist' and another coffer. In the way of furniture we
have three velvet and two leather chairs, ten stools of wood and
two of leather ; for the dinner table there were a dozen English
302 Sir James Balfour Paul
pewter plates, with covers, six great plates, probably ashets, with
their covers, six saucers (tea and coffee were of course unknown),
a dozen trenchers of English pewter and a dozen of Scots pewter,
besides a great many kitchen utensils and furnishings. No
wooden trenchers are mentioned. The whole inventory conveys
a much greater sense of comfort than we found at Calder House
itself, and the presumption is that the family found the burghal
residence much more habitable than their more stately mansion at
Calder.
It is commonly supposed that the clergy of this period, whether
of the old church or the new, were not greatly given to studies
either in theology or general literature, in fact that they were on
the whole ignorant and unlettered. But perhaps there were more
exceptions than we have been accustomed to believe. It is at
least interesting to find the great Archbishop of St. Andrews,
John Hamilton, a natural son of James, first Earl of Arran, lending
from his library to James Brown the humble incumbent of the
parish of Kirknewton, a really choice selection of thirty-seven
books relating both to theology and the humanities. Among the
former may be mentioned a Commentary on the Psalter by
Petrus Lombardus, the famous Magister Sententiarum of the
schoolmen ; the works in whole or in part of St. Ambrose,
St. Clement, St. Jerome, St. Basil, and eight odd volumes of the
writings of St. Augustine, a Concordance to the Bible and other
works. Some of these were bound in white, probably the usual
parchment binding of the time, while others were in red leather
or in wooden boards coloured either black or red. In the section
of the humanities we find several books by and on Cicero, the
Adagia of Erasmus, the History of Philosophy by Diogenes Laertius,
a book entitled De Modis Latine Loquendi by Adrian, a curious
treatise on ancient coins called De Asse (et paribus ejus] by
Guillaume Bude, published in 1514, Pliny's Natural History and
some more. Altogether a wonderful collection of books with
which the country parson could wile away the long winter evenings
in his dimly-lit manse of Kirknewton, It says something too for
the liberality of the easy-going Archbishop that he should have
consented to lend so many books to the parson of a parish so far
away from St. Andrews, but it is probable, considering the general
character of the prelate, that he was not himself a very earnest
student in his library.
Another library is mentioned in a deed recorded at Edinburgh
in 1557 by Gilbert Grote. It belonged to Mr. David Whitelaw
Social Life in the Sixteenth Century 303
of Cauldsyde near Whittingehame, probably a lawyer from the
character of most of the books specified. He leaves to a certain
Katherine Raite, by whom he had had several children ' all his
buikis within his chaulmer,' probably his writing chambers in
Edinburgh, together with fourteen specially designed volumes,
the work of canonists or civilians. It is hardly necessary to give
their titles in detail as the authors are for the most part forgotten,
but it is to the credit of the editor of Grote's Protocols that he
has been able to identify them all. They are good examples of
the dreary studies which the jurists of that age had to undertake.
There is a long will of Isobel Gray, the widow of Alexander
Achesoun in Preston, in which are many legacies. Apart from
sheets, blankets, cushions, arras hangings and other household
plenishings, we may note some of her more personal belongings.
To a granddaughter she leaves a gold chain weighing six
ounces ; other legatee had a ring of gold with a blue stone in it
and another ring of gold with a moor's head. Her personal
wardrobe was not very extensive ; we hear of a black gown, a
brown kirtle, * high meitted clokes of Scots blak,' a new petticoat,
two * paytlets ,' a best one of velvet and another, a £ bone grace '
or bonnet, an apron and long sleeves of Lille worsted, a gray
mantle and a 'best cloke.' This is not a very elaborate wardrobe
for a lady who, if not * of the county ' seems to have been com-
fortably off.
The wife of an ordinary Edinburgh burgess seems to have been
better provided with jewellery. The widow of Henry Tindell,
having paid out certain sums of money for the tocher of her
daughters by her first marriage, leaves to Agnes and Janet Brunton,
her daughters by a second husband, three gold rings and 'ane belt
of silver ourgilt with gold weand nine ounces.' She reserves
power, however, to give her husband or his friends the first offer
of them.
Testators, then as now, sometimes attempted to put right by
their will any wrongs they may have done in their lifetime. But
seldom is there such a candid confession of fault made as was done
by John Clerk, burgess of Ayr, in 1531. He, * moved by the
prick of conscience ' left certain skins and a doublet to Allan
Boyman, brother of the late John Boyman, because the testator
had acquired from the said John certain lands in Ayr under the
just price. Few purchasers have compunction at buying land at a
cheap price, and in this case the difference between what the testator
thought the true value of his purchase and the sum which he
304 Sir James Balfour Paul
actually gave does not seem to amount to very much if it was
only represented by some skins and a doublet.
It was not uncommon for elderly people to surrender their
lands and goods to their children or others on condition of being
kept comfortably for the remainder of their lives ; very much the
same thing indeed as purchasing an annuity is in modern days.
Thus George Cambell, in 1519, gives to his son William the lands
on which he lives and all his goods, together with the tutelage
and charge of his daughters. William, prudent man, accepts the
tutelage only on condition that the said women ' fufilled his
counsel'; otherwise he promises to receive and sustain his father
in lodging, bed and table, in eatables, drinks and clothes and other
necessaries of life according to his status. And in 1551 Margaret
Haliburton, relict of Adam Tunno of Hairheuch renounced her
right to her terce of these lands in favour of Adam Tunno and
his father William, reserving to herself the property of Eliotlaw
for her lifetime. In return for this Adam promises to allow her
food and clothes * befitting such a well-born woman ' a well-
covered chamber, with one maid and fire and other necessaries
during her lifetime. As in many other documents it is expressly
stated that the party making it is not compelled nor circumvented,
but makes it of her own free will. Lower down in the social
scale more modest provision is made in similar instances. Old
Mrs. Mutar in Kynneill gets from her son James 'a butt of land
sufficient to hold a peck of beir sown, a little house bewest the
cheek of his door, a piece of yard and twelve merks a year.'
When a young man made choice of a profession or trade he
was entered an apprentice under conditions which seem astonishing
in our days, but which no doubt had the effect of turning out
craftsmen who knew their work and had a pride and pleasure in
it. Take the case of Simon Watson, who in 1555 was, with
the consent of his mother, bound apprentice to John Mytok,
shoemaker in Edinburgh, for the term of six years. He was to
serve for five years for meat and drink only without any
wages whatever ; his clothing was to be at his own and his
mother's expense ; the wording of the deed is obscure — of course
it is only a condensation of the actual indenture — but sometime
or other Mytok was to pay him £6 los. Scots. The master on his
part undertook to instruct his apprentice in all points of the craft
and to conceal nothing from him ; the apprentice on the other
hand bound himself to be a good, true, leal, and thankful servant,
and not to hurt nor harm his master in any way.
Social Life in the Sixteenth Century 305
Stress of circumstances occasionally compelled persons to enter
into obligations which would hardly be enforceable in our day.
In 157S Jonn Thomson in Drumcors and his wife Margaret
Johnston bound themselves to be servants for life to James Ker
in Craigfyne, weaver, and Janet Henderson, his wife. They were
to live in the household with them and to hand over all their
goods and gear ; in return they were to be found in all meat,
drink, clothing, and in the case of the death of Ker or his wife
half their goods were to come to John and Margaret ; perhaps the
latter were a shrewd couple, and the bargain may not have been a
bad one for them after all.
Servants sometimes got no wages at all, or at least these were
much in arrear. One lady solemnly leaves in her will enough
money to her servant to pay for her wages which were due for
the last three half years ; and an old gentleman, being ' agit and
seiklie,' assigns to Catherine Cairns, his servant, the crop for
1576 of an acre of land of which he was the tenant, and also the
teind shieves for the same year of certain other lands, because he
was owing her ' hir fee for hir service the space of six years bigane
and thairfor because he hes na maney nor silver nor uthir affaris
to satisfie hir with.' Such were the expedients to which an
impecunious laird of the sixteenth century, much in need of
actual cash which was but scarce in the country, had to resort.
Some interesting items in regard to crime appear in these
books. We know, of course, that there were certain sanctuaries
throughout the land where offenders could temporarily shelter
themselves from justice. Among the best known of these were
the lands belonging to the Knights Templars, and their boun-
daries were generally indicated by crosses, but sometimes this
does not seem to have been the case. In 1521 Leonard Clark,
bailie of the burgh of Ayr, demanded that David Blair, one of
the burgesses, should deliver to him a certain Irishman, who had
stolen a jacket out of Leonard's boat and who was then in Blair's
house. He was, however, met by the allegation that the house
was really a Templar tenement, and as such was, and had been,
an asylum, 'girtht' and refuge to offenders for twenty-four hours.
It is not recorded whether or not this defence was successful, or
if the peccant Irishman was arrested at the end of the twenty-
four hours.
It is surprising to find that a peer could not become security
for a criminal, at least if he were charged with murder. Even
such a high and mighty person as John Earl of Lennox, when he
306 Sir James Balfour Paul
offered himself as surety for Campbell of Skerrington and others
who were accused of the slaughter of James Cathcart of Carbeston,
was refused in that capacity by the King's Messenger. The latter
official must have been sure of his ground and had a strong sense
of duty before he thus ran contrary to the desires of a nobleman
who was at that time, 1521, one of the guardians of the young
king, and had influence to have made short work of the Mes-
senger had he so desired. Another ineffectual offer to become
security for a murderer was made by that Leonard Clark whom
we met with before as having had his jacket stolen from his boat.
He offered himself as security for John Craufurd of Drongan,
accused of murder, to the Royal Macer, the Sheriff of Ayr, or
any other person having authority. Nobody appearing to receive
his security, he protested * for remedy of law ' that it should not
prejudice the accused.
A macer or * claviger ' was in these days a more important
official than he is now. Charles Campbell in Bargour being sued
for debt before the Sheriff Depute of Ayr, stoutly asserted that
being a * masar ' he ought not to be tried by the Sheriff of Ayr or
his Depute, because he was under the special jurisdiction of the
Lyon King-of-Arms, and ought to be tried by him. The terms
of the Instrument are not very clear, but it rather seems that his
contention was upheld.
How Patrick Richart of Knokgoif clearly contravened the law
and flouted the authority of the Lyon is shown in an Instrument
of 1518, in which Patrick acknowledges that he had made a
certain leaden seal, containing the figure of a military horn or
trumpet * in arms,' that is, presumably on a shield, and his own
name engraved on the circumference, which seal he 'approved,
owned and ratified.' What the penalties were in 1518 for taking
heraldic law into one's own hands we do not know, but probably
they were sufficiently terrible ; within the same century, in 1592,
the Lyon King-of-Arms and his heralds were given a commission
to visit the arms borne within the realm, and to inhibit any
unauthorised use of such, under pain of escheat of the articles on
which the arms were engraved or painted, together with a fine ot
j£ioo or imprisonment. Arms were practically useful in those
days, especially for putting on seals in order to authenticate
documents, at a period when many men even of good position
were unable to write. The loss of a seal was therefore rather
a serious matter ; in 1523 this misfortune occurred to William
Craufurd in Ochiltree, and in consequence he made public pro-
Social Life in the Sixteenth Century 307
clamation of the fact that his seal was missing and had been
carelessly lost by him, by the hands of John Cunynhame, King's
\ sergeant, at the market cross of the burgh of Ayr.
\ There is a curious formal acknowledgment of an armorial seal
in a deed executed by Janet and Lucy Cairns in 1524. They had
\orne under certain obligations to Adam Wallace and his wife
pnet Maxwell in relation to certain lands. Jonet Cairns, * uncom-
plled by either force or fraud,' declared that she had chosen for
h<rself the state of religion and that it was her intention to enter
tli nunnery at Haddington. She accordingly 'acknowledges'
hel armorial seal, made in lead or pewter, containing the figures
of \hree birds, with the legend ' clearly cut ' round it ' S. Jonete
(Cainis).' There are several seals still extant which bear the arms
of Cairns — three martlets — but they all have some difference as
belonging to cadets of the family. It is doubtful if Jonet had
really any right to the undifferenced arms belonging to Cairns of
that ilc, as she was the daughter of Henry Cairns of Dankeith,
and net apparently a daughter of the head of the house, who
alone had the right to the arms. Indeed at this time there was
no such family as Cairns of that ilk ; it had disappeared in the male
line more than a century before through the marriage of an
heiress to Stephen de Crichton.
Doctors had evidently to walk with wary steps or they might
be exposed to an action of damages on the part of the relatives of
a patient who might happen to die under their hands. Thus
Alexander Dera, Medicinator et curator in arte vulnerum et aliis
infirmitatibus, makes a contract in 1540 with John Caling, who
had been severely wounded, by which * after laying hands on his
wounds' he undertook to do his utmost to cure John. The
latter, on his part, discharged the doctor of all responsibility in
connection with what should be done for his cure, whether he
should happen to live or die, and promised, along with his wife
and children, not to pursue Alexander at any time to come.
There are many instances of matters referred to arbitration.
Not the least curious is a case proceeding on the narrative that
Sir John Faw, chaplain, and Duncan Laythis, layman, had been
having a game at tennis together. Laythis averred that the
chaplain had served a ball with so much force and presumably
with so little skill, that it struck Duncan's eye and put it out.
But Duncan rather gives himself away by stating that it was done
* by accident,' and, if so, it is difficult to see how he could be suc-
cessful in his claim for damages. However the parties amicably
308 Sir James Balfour Paul
agree to submit the matter to the decision of two arbiters, Sir
Thomas Layng and Henry Hunter, both chaplains. It says
much for Duncan's trust in the impartiality of the Church that
he should have consented to a remit to two priests whose sym-
pathies would naturally be with their fellow cleric. But such was
the case, and the arbiters solemnly accepted the onus of deciding
between the parties, and named a day for the proof and another
for the judgment on it. The result of their deliberations is no
chronicled.
There was no ' prohibition ' in the sixteenth century, ard
thirsty souls got as much as was good for them and often a goxi
deal more. Ale was the principal drink of all classes in Scotknd
in the sixteenth century ; it was made without hops and its pice
varied from one to two shillings a gallon. Bishop Leslie giv<s it
his benediction and describes it as t maist halsum.' But ;vine
could be freely got, and at very moderate price ; in 1567 Parlia-
ment fixed the price of Claret at a shilling a Scots pint, and
Rochelle eightpence, while Cognac was tenpence. Whisky was
made and drunk to a certain extent, but it was not the popular
national drink then, and its greatest consumers were the inhabitants
of the Western Isles. Port was practically unknown.
So long as a customer had credit he could run up a bill at a
tavern for a considerable amount. Archibald Cleghorn kept a
public in Linlithgow along with his wife Margaret Loverance (a
pretty name which only survives in the less euphonious form of
Lawrence), and a certain bibulous person, Robert Loch by name,
residing in Ochiltree, had incurred a bill to him of £10 8s.
Three pounds of this had been paid, but the tapster's patience got
exhausted and he repaired to the notary, whose chamber was con-
veniently situated next door to the tavern, and there an obligation
was drawn up by which Loch obliged himself to pay the balance
of the said money owing. This was in January 1575, but Loch's
habits either in the matter of drinking or paying did not improve.
Not a penny of the money did the landlord or his wife see ; on
the contrary, six months afterwards Loch gives a new obligation
to pay the old sum with the addition of £3 I2s. 4d., which had
been incurred since the former date. By the nth September he
was still owing £11 8s. for ' borrowed money, dinners, suppers
and lawings,' the last a generic word for tavern reckonings, for
which he gave a further obligation. Shortly after he appears to
have cleared his accounts, but immediately began a new score,
which amounted on i8th March 1576 to 305. 4d., for which he
Social Life in the Sixteenth Century 309
as usual gave a further obligation. On iyth November, 1576,
the debt stood at fourteen merks seven shillings, and though the
creditors must have been paid some time thereafter, there was a
fresh bill of 145. incurred for drinks consumed from 9th August,
1577, to 2nd February, 1578. This is the last we hear of this
drouthy customer.
The above items, taken almost at random from the Protocol
Books, throw an interesting light on the manners and customs ot
our forefathers. We may think them quaint or funny, but they
were neither the one nor the other to the persons concerned,
merely ordinary occurrences in their daily life. They are grouped
round an important period in Scottish history, when the old order
was changing or just about to change. By the next century more
modern conditions had set in, consequent on the influence of the
Renascence in Scotland, as felt chiefly through the Reformation,
and the growing wealth of the country after the Union of the
Crowns in the beginning of the seventeenth century. All this is
admirably set forth in the remarkable series of Rhind Lectures
delivered this spring by Mr. Warrack.
We might not expect to find so much information on social life
in the apparently dry records contained in the Protocol Books of
obscure country lawyers ; we owe a debt of gratitude to the
Scottish Record Society for having given historians easy access to
those illuminating documents, and we trust that in future, aided by
an increase in the membership, the Society may continue the good
work it has carried on for a considerable number of years, and will
publish still more annals of the past, which will add to our know-
ledge of the life and personality of our ancestors.
JAMES BALFOUR PAUL.
The Navy in the Great War
FROM such a book as this we are not to expect the vivid
personal touches, the sense of adventure, the atmosphere
of romance. Sir Julian Corbett has far other aims than to thrill
or captivate us. His is a task onerous indeed, and weighted
with serious responsibility ; no less than to tell the whole and
exact truth concerning the naval operations of the great war-
in a word, to write the official history.
And he is perforce, therefore, occupied with much and minute
detail, abhorrent to the general reader. Popular historians con-
fine themselves to the great battles — St. Vincent, the Nile,
Trafalgar — the single supreme days, the lofty mountain peaks in
the landscape of time. They say little of the dreary intervening
years, the valleys, as it were, of unceasing toil, bitter hardships,
harassing anxiety, which occupy', for those who care to examine it,
by far the larger area of the authentic record. The battles, taken
by themselves, distort the perspective ; they are the merest pin-
pricks on the chart of history.
During the late war, well-nigh interminable as it seemed to
most of us, a brief twenty-four hours probably covered the actual
engagements in which heavy vessels took part. One might
almost say they were fought in less time than it takes to read of
them. Coronel, of bitter memory, was over in an hour ; the
Falklands, a leisurely affair, occupied five or six ; Sidney against
Emden, a single-ship action, lasted less than two ; Jutland, one
of the decisive * indecisive ' battles of the world, began at three
o'clock in the afternoon, and was practically at an end before nine.
About fifteen hours in all for these earth-shaking events ! Battles
at sea are like thunderstorms, sudden, terrific, and soon over.
The end, delayed in land encounters, is reached with alarming
1 Naval Operations, History of the Great War based on Official Documents, by direc-
tion of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Vol. i., to the
Battle of the Falklands, December, 1914. By Sir Julian S. Corbett. Pp. xi. 470.
8vo. With 18 maps in case. London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1920.
173. 6d. net.
The Navy in the Great War 311
swiftness. For this reason, that supreme issues often hang in the
balance there, and the destinies of nations are determined in the
twinkling of an eye, to naval engagements belongs a feverish and
dramatic interest. And our attention, as is natural, rivets itself
upon these hours of doom.
There are still other reasons why, to the exclusion of the
intervening time and dull detail, they arrest the mind. Theirs is
the romance of the sea itself, a purer element than earth, un-
stained, untortured even by man's most infernal activities, and
subject to moods more capricious and incalculable. The comba-
tants, moreover, as in ancient and chivalric days, enter the arena
groomed and gloved, one might say, much as they would enter a
drawing-room, and, emerging from a titanic contest, may sit down
to a dinner-table adorned with flowers and shining with crystal
and silver. In warfare at sea — and here is another touch of
romance as of justice — the risks are the same for all — from
powder-monkey to admiral. Like the heroes of epic story, the
leader shares all the perils of the combat. Not for him, as for
the Commander-in-Chief of land armies, a peaceful office out of
hearing of the guns, a hundred miles it may be behind the actual
scene of battle. The bond of a common and imminent danger
unites the whole fleet ; nor, when the ships are within range, is the
life of any man, whatever his rank, secure for a moment. A single
salvo, a single well-directed torpedo may dispose of a thousand
men, an entire ship's company. There are no privileged or
protected persons in a sea affair.
But it is with scientific history, not with romantic adventure,
that Sir Julian is concerned, and we have here a volume of nearly
five hundred pages which deals with no more than the first four
months of war — from its outbreak to the Falklands. Yet these
months covered operations of the first magnitude, and exhibited,
as in a prophetic mirror, the probable course of future events.
Looking back upon it all we perceive that, save for the submarine
attack upon British trade, little that was unforeseen or ' out of the
picture ' took place at sea. The enemy did what was expected of
him, pursued the world-old policy of the weaker power, the
policy of avoiding fleet-collisions and concentrating effort by
means of raiders, submarines and mines upon two objects, the
gradual attrition of our fighting strength and the interruption
of our sea communications.
Fleet-actions were not in Germany's programme. A fleet in
being, ever threatening to strike, awaiting a favourable moment,
312 W. Macneile Dixon
husbanding and adding to its formidable sources, constituted, she
knew, an embarrassment the British admirals would gladly have
exchanged for an open trial of strength. Once, therefore, the
deployment of our fleet had taken place, once our battleships and
cruisers were upon their war-stations at home and over all the
seas of the world, no crisis was to be expected. The cards had
been dealt, and the game took on that ' dead and uneventful
character with which our ancestors were so familiar.' But we had
not been students of our own history, and the uninstructed
public early began, through the pens of eager journalists, to
enquire, at times derisively, what the navy was doing. The first
duty of the British fleet, so the newspaper strategists informed us,
is to seek out and destroy the enemy's fleet — a fleet, be it ob-
served, out of all sight and hearing, buried behind barriers the
most impenetrable ever constructed. This ridiculous and unhis-
torical doctrine was, as Sir Julian Corbett remarks, * nowhere
adopted with more unction than in Germany,' and our enemy's
elaborate and reiterated taunts, the merest propaganda, that the
British fleet had lost its old offensive spirit, and lay inactive,
unadventurous and in hiding, unhappily found echoes among
ourselves.
The chief function of the fleet — and there is no second function
— is, must be, and always has been to secure for British and
friendly vessels perfect freedom of action and to deny it to our
enemies. To secure such command of the sea it may be necessary
to fight, but if the end can be secured without firing a gun or
losing a life, so much the better. Naval battles are not fought
for glory. From the outbreak of war Germany's ocean trade
was paralysed — that half of the task immediately and completely
achieved. The other half, protection of our own trade routes
against mines, submarines and enemy cruisers, presented a
thornier problem, and occupied practically all our naval energies
for the remaining years of the war. ' When we consider,' writes
Sir Julian, * the prodigious nature of the task, the unprecedented
volume of trade, the tangled web which its crossing routes wove
round the earth, and then how slender was our cruiser force
beside the immensity of the oceans, and how in every corner of
them the enemy was lurking, all defects are lost in the brilliance
and magnitude of the success. We have now, after our manner,,
ceased to wonder at it, but the fact remains that, for all we may
point to occasions and places when more might have been done,
the success of the defence over the attack went beyond everything
The Navy in the Great War 313
the most sanguine and far-sighted among us had dared to
hope, and beyond anything we had achieved before.' We
were in a sense prepared. In the great War-Book the gigantic
and necessary plan had been worked out in every particular.
1 The requisite telegrams — amounting to thousands — were care-
fully arranged in order of priority for dispatch in order to prevent
congestion on the day of action ; every possible letter and docu-
ment was kept ready in an addressed envelope ; special envelopes
were designed so that they could be at once recognised as taking
priority of everything.' From the Warning Telegram to the War
Telegram the machinery worked with perfect smoothness, and
when the ultimatum to Germany was dispatched Admiral Jellicoe
was already at sea.
In this sense we were prepared, and such readiness was all the
more necessary since the naval force at our disposal in 1914 was
none too strong. Light cruisers and destroyers were far too few,
and but for a miracle, the amazing auxiliary force built up from
the mercantile marine and fishing fleets and the indomitable spirit
of their crews, we should have been in very evil case. Happily
the meaning of the phrase * a maritime people ' magnificently
revealed itself. Tramps, drifters, trawlers, yachts, motor-boats,
an unparalleled and heterogeneous collection of vessels, gathered
to the fray. * There had been nothing like it,' as Sir Julian
writes, ' since the distant days when the mercantile marine was
counted as part of the Navy of England — nothing to equal it even
in the heyday of privateering, or in the days of our floating
defence against Napoleon's invasion flotilla.' * Our nation was in
arms upon the sea,' an inspiring spectacle, which, while it
astounded our adversaries, offered the most convincing proof
that, however time had changed the conditions and science the
weapons of war, England was old England still.
It would be manifestly impossible to follow here the record of
naval doings in the busy and early months of war — the destruction
of German wireless stations throughout the world, the hunt for
German cruisers among all the isles and oceans, the convoying of
transports from India, Canada, Australia, the transfer of the
Expeditionary Force to Havre, the co-operation with the army in
Turkey, Egypt, and off the French and Belgian coasts. But the
circumstantial survey of its multifarious activities — not always
successful, as the escape of Goeben and Breslau bears witness — will
give Sir Julian's readers some conception of the nature and mag-
nitude of its appointed task. More particularly will it make
314 W. Macneile Dixon
clear what formidable additions were made to that task by the
constant change of army plans. Take one instance. On August
29th the military leaders decided to evacuate Ostend and transfer
the army base from Havre to St. Nazaire. It is easy to write,
but what an undertaking ! Not to speak of officers, men, horses,
60,000 tons of oil, for which tankers were necessary, and a pro-
digious collection of military material had to be shipped, trans-
ported and unshipped. In the final six days of the evacuation
there left Havre 20,000 troops, 4,000 horses and 60,000 tons of
stores. Though it drew no admiring gaze this feat deserves, in
Sir Julian's words, ' to be enshrined in national memory.' Take
another case. Who does not recall the nightmare of Zeebrugge,
that painful thorn in the side, from which the attacks on our
Channel ports were incessant and exasperating ? And who did
not ask himself why, before we evacuated that port, were the
mole and harbour works not destroyed ? That the naval authori-
ties had overlooked so crucial a matter no one could believe. Sir
Julian's record supplies the answer to the problem. With the
greatest reluctance the Admiralty left Zeebrugge intact at the
request of the War Office. It was to be a port of re-entry when
the great flank attack on the German armies took place. What
charming optimism ! And what a price in anxiety, hostile criti-
cism and loss of human life the navy paid for it.
There are few pages in this book which do not add to our
knowledge or refresh our memories. The distribution of our
naval forces on the outbreak of war, the co-operation of the navy
with the army in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Cameroons and
the Persian Gulf — a story in itself — the search for the elusive
Karlsruhe and the mystery of her fate, the convoy system by which
the submarine campaign was baffled, the scheme of channel pro-
tection, the operations at Tsingtau, the Antwerp affair, the loss of
Audacious and reasons for its concealment — these and a thousand
other matters, with elaborate maps and plans of naval engage-
ments, make of this volume a veritable encyclopaedia of informa-
tion. Of Coronel and the Falklands — thrilling narratives both—
we have a vivid and detailed account. Naturally in those early
months, while Emdcn and Von Spec's squadron were at large,
there could be no security for either trade or transport, and before
and above all else, save the watch upon the High Seas Fleet, a net
for the enemy cruisers had to be woven. Vague and incessant
rumours of their activities and intentions ran over all the world,
and tremors were felt in every sea.
The Navy in the Great War 315
Then came Coronel, a severe blow to British prestige, which
brought matters to a crisis. Craddock's heroic intention to
cripple the enemy even at the cost of his own destruction, if
this be the true interpretation of his action, cannot but elicit
admiration. Whether justifiable or not, it compelled at least
an instant riposte. There could be no question of delay, no
temporising with so ugly a situation. It was felt, and rightly
felt, however the blame might be apportioned, that the continued
existence of Von Spec's powerful and menacing squadron gravely
discredited the Admiralty. With the utmost haste and secrecy
the battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible were detached from
the Grand Fleet, and, with Admirable Sturdee in command,
dispatched on their avenging mission. Then befel the greatest,
indeed the only stroke of luck, with which the Navy was favoured
throughout the whole war. Unconscious of Sturdee's presence,
Von Spec timed his arrival at the Falklands as if in response
to an invitation. Coronel had been fought in a fierce tempest,
but on December 8th, when Gneisnau opened the harbour of
Port Stanley, with no suspicion of how that day would end, the
sea was hardly ruffled and the sun shone bright. One look
within the harbour was enough, she saw the battle cruisers, knew
the game was over, and with the rest of the German squadron
made off at full speed to the east. For Von Spec there was
indeed no hope, he knew that Coronel was about to be avenged,
and that Craddock's fate would be his ere sunset. The details
of the action are curiously incomplete and even conflicting.
According to one German survivor the German ships scattered,
each endeavouring to escape at her utmost speed. Sir Julian
Corbett credits Von Spec with the honourable decision to sacrifice
his more powerful cruisers to save the rest. It is difficult to
accept the suggestion. He had not the speed to save himself, the
alternative was to fight or to surrender. The precise movements
and positions of the vessels engaged at various stages of the battle
are in doubt, there are gaps in the record, and one has suspicions
that with so overwhelming a superiority in guns and speed,
victory might have been more swiftly achieved. Complete, however,
but for the escape of Dresden^ it was, and since Emdens meteoric
career had already closed British control of the outer seas was
from that day forth unchallenged.
Sir Julian's first volume more than fulfils all reasonable expec-
tations. Quiet and measured in tone, as befits his role of respon-
sible historian, without inflation or rhetoric, it forms a worthy
316 The Navy in the Great War
record of events and achievements never to be forgotten. It
illuminates much that was obscure in the military as well as in
the naval history of the tempest we have so recently weathered,
and can hardly fail to bring home once more to English readers
our utter and absolute dependence upon the command of the sea.
W. MACNEILE DIXON.
Reviews of Books
THOUGHTS ON THE UNION BETWEEN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. By
Albert V. Dicey, K.C., D.C.L., LL.D., Fellow of All Souls' College,
Oxford, and Robert S. Rait, C.B.E., Historiographer-Royal for Scot-
land, Professor of Scottish History and Literature in the University
of Glasgow. Pp. xxvi, 394. 8vo. London: Macmillan & Co. 1920.
1 6s. net.
THIS book does not propose to be a history. It is rather a commentary upon
a great transaction. It tells how that transaction, after presenting almost
insuperable difficulties up till 1 703, became possible and was carried through
four years later.
The learned authors begin by pointing out the ignorance * even of the
educated English gentleman' about the Act of Union between England and
Scotland. Till recently he knew little or nothing of the old Parliament of
Scotland, and would often confuse the Union of Crowns with the Union
of Parliaments. After this book he will have no excuse. It provides a
remedy in the shape of an apparatus of admirable clearness, order and
facility of use. The graces of narrative are willingly forgone. The object
of the work is to set forth the * thoughts ' of its authors, which may be, as
they explain, conclusions, or assertions of very plain, but often forgotten,
fact. The ' thought ' or proposition is made conspicuous by italics. The
* comment ' or demonstration follows in orderly numbered and titled para-
graphs, each abundantly exploring and illuminating its subject. No text-
book could be more conveniently arranged. The authors draw upon the
labours of Scottish historians and students of history who for the last sixty
years have investigated the subject with infinite care. The greater part of
the second of the ten chapters has already appeared in the pages of this
Review.
Part I. is devoted to the parliamentary government of Scotland from
1603 to I7°7> Part H- to tne passing of the Act of Union, and Part III. to
that Act and its results.
The authors explain that the Parliaments of England and Scotland were
alike in resting on the same feudal and medieval ideas, but were unlike
in two great facts. The English Parliament had long held legislative
authority, and since Henry IV. had been the centre of English public life.
The Scottish Parliament rather registered the laws made by the executive
government than legislated on its own authority, and it was never a centre
of Scottish public life. But the Revolution Settlement, in England a con-
servative movement, was in Scotland revolutionary, and from 1690 the
318 Union between England and Scotland
Scottish Parliament was generally predominant both in legislation and
administration.
Union had often been attempted. Edward I. had, after a century of
peace between the two countries, tried to unite them by the conquest of
Scotland. His efforts brought on a long period of incessant hatred and
fighting, and delayed complete union for four hundred years. But an
effective step was taken in its direction when Henry VII. married his
daughter Margaret to James IV. in 1502; and when, in consequence,
James VI. of Scotland succeeded in 1603 to the English sovereignty as heir
to Elizabeth, the two countries had now one king, although they had two
separate legislatures. The authors well point out the essential difference
between a union of crowns and a union of parliaments — that is, of countries.
James was king in both countries, but his English Parliament could make
no law for Scotland, nor his Scottish any law for England.
James tried, and failed, to bring about a complete union. Cromwell
made a temporary one by conquest, and under it Scotland sent representa-
tives to the Commonwealth Parliament at Westminster, though she
retained her own laws. Under Cromwell both countries tasted the mutual
benefits of free trade. And both were unwilling, but Scotland, the
poorer country, the more unwilling, to relinquish these. An attempt to
arrange a union of Parliaments was made under Charles II., but the com-
mission appointed could not reach an agreement. William of Orange did
what he could to promote a union, and urged it from his deathbed. Queen
Anne followed his counsel. She was no sooner queen than she asked the
Parliaments of England and Scotland to appoint commissioners to draw up
a treaty of union. They also failed to agree.
England had strong motives for the union. She was at war with
France, Scotland's ancient ally, and Le Roi Soleil, who had the best army
in Europe, had acknowledged the title of the Pretender to the crowns of
both England and Scotland. Marlborough's victories in Flanders were still in
the future. The Scots, or a large number of them, might attempt to restore
the Pretender, rouse the English Jacobites, and bring about a civil war. The
English Parliament had settled the succession to the crown of England on
the Princess Sophia of Hanover or her heirs, being Protestant. It was
needful that the Scottish Parliament should secure her succession to the
crown of Scotland.
That Parliament passed two Acts, one reserving to itself the power to
make war or negotiate treaties of peace, commerce, or alliances ; the other
providing for the honour and sovereignty of the Scottish Crown and
kingdom, frequency and power of parliaments, and the freedom of the
religion and trade of the nation from English or foreign influence. This
Act also ordered the nation to be put in a state of defence, and called out
the able-bodied population for that purpose. Scotland was determined on
an arrangement satisfactory to her or complete separation and independence.
England retorted by the Alien Act of 1705, which offered the Scottish
Parliament the opportunity of negotiating for a Treaty of Union, and
enacted that, from next Christmas and until the Scottish Parliament should
have made a law settling the Hanoverian succession, Scotsmen should be
Union between England and Scotland 319
aliens in England, and trade between the two countries in many most
important articles prohibited. The authors regard this Act as most
prudent and statesmanlike. It contained, they say, no word that inter-
fered with the dignity or independence of Scotland or the sovereignty of
the Scottish Parliament. It was meant to make clear to Scotsmen that the
settlement of the succession or an Act of Union was a political necessity to
both countries.
The conflict of the Parliaments, as the book shows, brought about the
Act of Union. In 1705 an Act of the Scottish Parliament for a treaty
with England was passed, and it left to the Queen the nomination of the
Scottish commissioners. The treaty was drawn up in London by the joint
Commission, which was not allowed to deal with religion. It was laid
before the Scottish Parliament first, which discussed, amended and passed
it, adding an Act which provided that the national Presbyterian Church of
Scotland as it now existed was c to continue ... in all succeeding genera-
tions,' and agreeing beforehand to a similar Act for the security of the
Episcopal Church of England to be passed by the Parliament of England.
The authors describe the Act of Union as the most beneficial statute
which the Parliament of England or Scotland ever passed. But they think
it probable that a plebiscite of either country would have rejected it. They
recall, however, the power of tradition in favour of union, the interests of
Protestantism, and the pressing need of Scotland for material prosperity and
therefore for free trade. The Scots were a very poor, but a thrifty and
ingenious and enterprising people. They had not lost the opportunity of
the Commonwealth. They had built up a trade with the English colonies,
in many of which they had ' kindly Scots ' to aid them. Masterless men
and women, * obstinate phanatics,' ' absenters from church,' and prisoners
after battle had been freely sold to service in the plantations. Many had
gained freedom, some had prospered and risen to influence, and most could
be relied on to aid their countrymen in evading, for mutual profit, the
English restrictions. The free trade was all important to Scotland's
prosperity. But England had her interests in it too. The American coast
was too long, its inlets too many, and its people too independent for
England to stop the trade, however she might hamper it. And, as English
merchants protested, if Scotland could not buy goods in England to barter
with the colonists she would buy them in Holland and elsewhere, and the
colonial tobacco and other produce with which she paid for them would go
to the Continent instead of to England, and be carried in foreign instead of
English ships.
The penultimate chapter of the book is devoted to the ' thought ' that,
under the Act of Union, the people of Great Britain (i) accepted the con-
stitutional arrangements created by the Act ; and (2) acquiesced in the
unity of the country and in the sentiment that the inhabitants of Great
Britain form one united people, at any rate as against foreigners. Only with
this latter did the Act become completely successful, and it is worth noting
that the authors give it a century for the process. They point out, too, in
the fine summary given in an epilogue, that it was not the extraordinary
wisdom of the Act of Union, based as it was on a real mutual contract, nor
320 Union between England and Scotland
was it any wise act of any statesmen or body of statesmen that was the
final cause of its passing. The true and essential cause was the course of
events and opinions.
As the authors show, the Union has by no means destroyed either
English or Scottish nationality. A single form of religion is plainly no
necessity to nationality, for the Act which made Scotland and England one
nation established a different form of religion in each. Nationality is not
easy to define, and does not perhaps always exist where it is most loudly pro-
claimed. But if it means traditional national sentiment, national pride, a
country's own laws, its own education, language, literature and thought,
then each country has preserved it. Even the foreigner to whom Great
Britain is one country does not fail to differentiate Englishmen from
Scotsmen.
The book is, and not for Englishmen only, a valuable help to the full
understanding of the Union. It is not a substitute for the history, but one
understands the history much better for having it. Other writers will
doubtless estimate differently some of the forces engaged, and place some
at least of their influence in different proportion. But it need hardly be
said that this serious and valuable work of the venerable Oxford professor
and his distinguished collaborator cannot be neglected by future students of
the subject. ANDREW MARSHALL.
ROMAN ESSAYS AND INTERPRETATIONS. By W. Warde Fowler, M.A.,
Hon. LL.D. Edinburgh, etc. Pp. 290. Demy 8vo. Oxford :
Clarendon Press. 1920. I2s. 6d. net.
DR. WARDE FOWLER in his Prefatory Note hints at a doubt as to whether
he has done right in reprinting and revising these papers, but leaves a
decision to the critics. It will be strange if the verdict is not a unanimous
one. It would have been a real loss to classical learning if the miscellaneous
articles which the volume contains had not been made generally available.
Besides, a good deal of the material has not been published before, and
anything that the author writes on the subjects of which he is a master
deserves the careful attention of students. The interest of the book is very
varied, so that everyone is likely to find something to suit his taste. The
biographical sketches of Mommsen and Niebuhr and the essay on the tragic
element in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar will naturally make the widest appeal.
They will be read with pleasure and profit by many whose knowledge of
Latin has long since forsaken them. But, as might be expected, the fare
provided for the specialist in more than one department is equally appetizing.
Dr. Warde Fowler's profound knowledge of Roman ritual and religion
is here brought to bear upon a number of isolated problems, and always with
illuminating results, the happy issue being materially facilitated sometimes
by his nice sense of the precise meaning of Latin words, and sometimes by his
familiarity with Nature and her ways. Typical instances are the essay on
* The Latin History of the Word Religio ' and that upon * The Oak and the
Thunder-god.' The 'Note on Privately Dedicated Roman Altars' is
valuable, but it stops short at a point where some of us would have welcomed
Fowler: Roman Essays and Interpretations 321
more light. How are we to interpret the fate that overtook so many
Roman altars when Roman forts in Scotland and elsewhere were abandoned ?
Were they huddled into pits by the triumphant barbarians? or were they
concealed by the retreating soldiery to save them from desecration ? The
discussions on selected passages from Horace and Vergil are most instructive,
and one can pay them no higher compliments than to say that they will be
most appreciated by those who are most familiar with the originals. As an
interpreter of Vergil, in particular, Dr. Warde Fowler has won for himself
a unique place. It is perhaps too much to hope that he will ever give us the
complete commentary which has long been overdue. But we can at least
assure him that we can never have too many such chips from his workshop
as he has set before us here. GEORGE MACDONALD.
THE QUIT-RENT SYSTEM IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES. By Beverley W.
Bond, Jr. With an Introduction by Charles M. Andrews. Pp. 492.
8vo. New Haven : Yale University Press. London : Humphrey
Milford. 1919. I2s. 6d. net.
CONTRIBUTED to the Yale Historical Publications, this historical study by
Professor Bond of a mode of land-tenure transplanted from England to the
American colonies, should specially interest students of feudalism. It
brings much unfamiliar fact of the new world to illustrate the institutions
of the old country, of which the American facts were a sequel. Just as
the charters of great tracts of America gave off the lands as if appurtenant
to royal manors in England, such for instance as the Castle of Windsor or
the demesne of East Greenwich, so the symbol of territorial ownership
under the colonial law and title deed, following the English model, was the
fixed rent or quit-rent, best known in Scotland as a feu-duty. The insti-
tution generally speaking never had a hearty welcome across the Atlantic,
where it was felt to be a restraint upon the completeness of the freehold,
and to savour of servitude. Historically in England it was a commutation
in money of medieval villein obligations, so that in America, in spite of its
character as a free and common socage (there were no copyholds in
America) it had a touch of the unfree about it which made it unpopular
with colonists emancipated from dependencies scarcely felt to be such in
England.
States varied in their attitude to it. Massachusetts forbade quit-rent in
1641, Connecticut in 1650, and Rhode Island in 1663. West Jersey
abandoned it, and in New Hampshire too it declined and tended gradually
to pass into abeyance. In Carolina also it became a virtual failure. But
it flourished in Virginia, and in New York it was not extinguished until
1846.
One phase of historical importance was that of the place the system had
among the grievances which came to a focus in the Revolution, of which
it was a contributory cause. Land speculation always counted as a factor
of disturbance in colonial politics. Diversities of practice in administration
and collection of quit-rents in both the proprietary and the crown colonies,
accompanied by errors of policy regarding them, made the system itself not
322 Quit-Rent System in the American Colonies
merely unpopular but publicly controversial ; and opposition to it developed
strongly in all the proprietary colonies. Professor Bond hints that the
action of the British authorities in giving up quit-rent in Canada after the
American Revolution was an indirect acknowledgment of mistaken policy
with the colonial States. Apparently, however, it was no more than the
logical outcome of administrative experience, especially in Quebec, where a
competing French method of tenure had sharpened the issue, and where
the British Government as far back as 1771 had realized that quit-rent had
failed. After tenure becomes politics its days are apt to be few and
troubled. Professor Bond deserves the thanks of investigators here as well
as across the ocean for a post-feudal study, in which tenurial law, colonial
development and revolutionary politics intimately combine.
GEO. NEILSON.
THE ENGLISH VILLAGE: A LITERARY STUDY, 1750-1850. By JULIA
PATON. Pp. xii. 236. Crown 8vo. New York : The Macmillan
Company. 1919. $1.50.
PART bibliographer, part anthologist, part political analyst, Julia Paton,
doctor of philosophy, has industriously compiled a useful collection of brief
descriptions of the various performances in literature in which rural life and
village organisation are pictured and discussed. In the century chosen the
parish registered a great change in its treatment by the poets and novelists.
The picturesque and sentimental predominated in the early standpoint ; the
critical, economic and social had completely gained the mastery, deepening
the note of discussion, in the later phases. A social motive, at first
secondary, grew constantly stronger, and with that change the village came
more and more to be recognised as a problem worthy of the best thought.
Maurice Hewlett's strange sad epic The Song oftht Plow typifies the altered
outlook from that of the optimistic almost Arcadian verse of the mid-
eighteenth century in which l health and plenty ' were assumed as the
unfailing cheer of * the labouring swain.'
For fifty years the touch of poetry was neither penetrating nor robust :
perhaps it was the prose of political reform that gave a new sharpness and
aggressive vigour to the tone. Elliott and Crabbe were the greatest of the
village bards, and their superiority was due not so much to their closer know-
ledge as to their political intensity. Wordsworth in that particular fell short.
Among the prose writers it is to George Eliot we have to look for the most
intimate and sympathetic view of the cottage interior. As the village comes
into being it connotes all the associations of villeinage : these it had not out-
lived when the French Revolution swept across our island. The village
of the Reform and Radical movement (for instance as it is so remarkably
reflected in the Fen wick Minute Book recently printed in our own columns)
has broken away from the medieval bonds and taken its place with the
industrial forces whithersoever these dubious and often wayward guides are
leading the way. Dr. Paton 's well reasoned catalogue of authors and works
on village history, life, aspiration, achievement and central thought is invalu-
able in its presentment of the conflict of purpose and ideal in past estimates
Paton : The English Village 323
which under fresh conditions are now passing into new. It is right to say,
however, that the authoress has aimed mainly at a picture of literature not
at a full study of the organic or political entity of the village. She has
made out of her task a very pleasant book with many apt and happy
quotations. A couple of corrective notes will conclude this notice. The
Death of the Earl of Eglinton is criticised as if it were a literary invention,
whereas it is a ballad-rendering of 'an ower true tale,' the shooting of
the Earl by Mungo Campbell in 1769, one of the many remarkable tragedies
of Ayrshire. Another poem, The Falls of Clyde or The Fairies, published in
1806 is referred to as ' anonymous'. It was the work of an Ayrshire clergy-
man, John Black. The writer of the present criticism possesses Black's own
print of his poem, with an umber of pencilled revisals. These unfortunately
throw no fresh light towards the literary evolution now so competently and
fruitfully undertaken by an American lady, of the spirit and story of our
British villages. GEO. NEILSON.
NOTES SUR L'HERALDIQUE DU ROYAUME-UNI. Par Bouly de Lesdain.
Pp.75. Large 8 vo. Paris: H. Daragon. 1919. 5 francs net.
M. BOULY DE LESDAIN takes for his text some comparatively recent
books relative to British heraldry, Sir W. St. John Hope's Heraldry for
Craftsmen and Beginners, Mr. Dorling's Leopards of England, Mr. J. H.
Stevenson's Heraldry of Scotland, and E. C. R. Armstrong's Irish Seal
Matrices and Seals. He discourses very intelligently on them all, but by far
the greater part of his brochure is taken up with an analysis of Mr.
Stevenson's work, naturally choosing for special mention anything with a
French connection, such as the arms of Colonel Cameron of Fassifern,
who bore on a chief a representation au nature! of the town of Aire in
France, where he had signalised himself in a brilliant action. However
appropriate such a charge may have been, it was quite unheraldic in
character, and not one which would be given at the present day. A much
more suitable example of commemorating brave deeds done in connection
with towns has been recently given in the case of a distinguished Canadian
general to whom the cities of Mons and Cambrai gave the right of bearing
their arms along with his own, and these additions have been duly made in
the Lyon Office.
M. de Lesdain's work will give a very fair idea of the principal points in
British and especially Scottish heraldry to his compatriots. It would have
been more interesting and useful, though it would no doubt have been
beyond the limits he assigned himself, if he had given a comparison of
British and French heraldry, pointed out the differences and resemblances,
and generally stated the position which heraldry now holds in the French
Republic. We know that there are many earnest students of the science
there, of whom M. de Lesdain is not the least eminent.
J. BALFOUR PAUL.
324 Gooch : Germany and French Revolution
GERMANY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By G. P. Gooch. Pp.
vi, 543. 8vo. London : Longmans, Green & Co. 145. net.
THIS is an able and most painstaking piece of work, its object being,
according to the author, 'to measure the repercussion of the French
Revolution in the mind of Germany.'
Time has brought about a strange reversal of the positions which France
and Germany once occupied. It is now France which, although ex-
hausted and ravaged, has a fairly stable government, while Germany has
not escaped the throes of revolution, with its king banished and its ulti-
mate future all uncertain. Mirabeau wrote of Germany in 1789, 'though
perhaps more advanced in education you are not so mature as we because
your emotions are rooted in the head and, since your brains are petrified
into slavery, the explosion will come with you much later than with us.'
Indeed, had the military movement in Germany been successful revolution
might have been long delayed.
The book opens with an interesting account of the political state of
that portion of Europe — a collection of petty kingdoms, electorates, free
cities and imperial knights — which was supposed to constitute the Holy
Roman Empire, an empire said to be * phantom, its machinery rotten and
crumbling, its head a mere honorary president.' The political conditions of
these petty states varied not so much on account of any difference in their
constitutions as because of the character of their rulers. The evil example
of France as it existed before the Revolution — of an extravagant and despotic
king and aristocracy ruling over a down-trodden and over-taxed people —
was felt in most minor German courts. The military policy of the great
Frederick, who had made militarism pay, infected the neighbouring rulers
— some of whom sold their subjects to fight other people's battles. In
certain of the free cities were the greatest prosperity and the most advanced
views to be found, but the majority had become moss-grown with reduced
populations, ruled over by cliques. There were also imperial knights
whose states we should call * estates,' and of whom someone wrote, * if a
place looks particularly derelick we need not ask questions for we know it
to be the village of an imperial knight.' It was upon a Central Europe so
constituted that the news of the French Revolution broke.
In subsequent chapters Mr. Gooch has collected the opinions of leading
Germans upon the events in France. He is justified in calling it the
Augustan age of German literature, and we have before us what such men
as Goethe and Schiller, as Fichte, Kant and Hegel thought upon the
subject. Of Kant the author says, 'the philosopher had never expected
the Revolution to run smoothly and he was therefore less stunned than
most of his contemporaries by its shattering discords,' but he considered the
death of the king as a crime beyond forgiveness. Fichte maintained that it
was * the duty as well as the right of citizens to alter their Constitutions at
need, banish the foul shadows of the past, and carve their way towards the
liberty which is the hope of the world.'
On the whole, the great German writers both of the romantic and the
philosophic schools may be said to have favoured the French movements, at
all events at the outset. If Hegel m his later days held up the Revolution
Gooch : Germany and French Revolution 325
as a * terrifying object lesson ' this must be attributed in his case, as in that
of others, to the effect which the reign of terror produced.
The effect of the Revolution upon Prussia and upon the minor states, as
also upon Rhineland and the south is dealt with at considerable length.
We find exhibited the same alarm of the ruling classes — the unrest of the
masses — here and there attempts at reform on the one hand and efforts to
repress popular movements on the other.
There is an interesting chapter upon the Germans in France during the
period of the Revolution. They form a curious group, representing various
attitudes towards the great events then taking place. Thus we have
Baron Grimm, who held ' that man is made neither for liberty nor for
truth,' and who in 1790 was prepared to prove geometrically that France
was ruined beyond recall. Such was the effect upon his mind after the
fall of the Bastille. His creed was thus expressed, 'I believe in Catherine
II., the only hope of humanity in these times of darkness.' It is not to be
wondered that he had to leave France in haste. With him may be con-
trasted Anacharsis Cloots, the * orator of the human race,' also a noble,
whose enthusiasm for the Revolution did not enable him in the end to
escape the guillotine. He is said to have perished with a smile on his lips.
A keen atheist, he had fallen under the displeasure of Robespierre, who
maintained that atheism was aristocratic. Yet another German noble,
Count Schlabrendorf, escaped death — because he could not find his boots
when the tumbril was waiting, and obtaining a day's delay he was
forgotten and ultimately released. There was Lux, who was associated
with Charlotte Corday, of whom it is recorded that he went to his fate
with rapture and actually sprang upon the scaffold. One of the most
striking cases was that of Von Trenk, who after spending years in the
dungeons of a royal tyrant, met his death on the scaffold at the hands of
the so-called friends of liberty. Some of these Germans were scoundrels,
such as Prince Charles of Hesse and Schneider the ex-priest. The latter
went about the country with a guillotine, and upon a guillotine he finally
expiated his crimes.
Mr. Gooch is of opinion that the influence of the Revolution, * of its
ideas and of the moving drama of blood and tears on the mind and soul
of the different countries of Europe has never thoroughly been explored.'
That may be so. In so far as Scotland is concerned we have the excellent
and useful work of Dr. H. W. Meikle. Perhaps it is too popular and not
philosophical enough to satisfy our author, but the reader will find in it not
a little to suggest reflection.
One cannot but ask the question, what would have been the effect of
the Revolution upon Europe had the fall of the Bastille not been followed
by the royal executions and the reign of terror ? Burke is a typical
instance of the reaction towards conservatism which these acts of violence
brought about. To take our own country as an example, while the
Revolution roused Scotland from a political lethargy, its later characteristic,
it beyond all question postponed for many years much needed parliamentary
and municipal reform. Even a Braxfield could hardly have acted as he did
had things been carried out in France in a sober and reasonable manner.
326 Gooch : Germany and French Revolution
The Scottish * Friends of the People ' seem to have ignored, ir they did
not excuse, the French atrocities, and it is a singular fact that the Labour
party of the present day is following the same course with regard to the
Bolshevists in Russia. W Q SCOTT MONCRIEFF.
INDIA AT THE DEATH OF AKBAR : An Economic Study. By W. H.
Moreland, C.S.I., C.I.E. Pp. xi, 328, with 2 Maps. 8vo. London :
Macmillan & Co. 1920. I2s.net.
MR. MORELAND'S work is one of singular utility at the present moment.
From contemporary authorities, whose evidence is weighed with the judg-
ment of a skilled investigator, he draws a picture of India at the time of the
death of the great Moghul Emperor, who, when he died in 1605, left to
his successor an empire without rival in Asia so far as wealth, power, and
ordered administration were concerned, and who bequeathed to all suc-
ceeding rulers of India the great basic principle that the essence of sound
government in India lies in the just regulation of the revenue from land.
The date of the beginnings of English influence in the economic develop-
ment of India almost coincides with that of Akbar's death, and Mr.
Moreland's wide experience of India and its peoples enables him to draw a
most interesting comparison between the condition of the people over
whom Akbar ruled and that of those who have now been in touch with
the English government for three centuries. His conclusion is that,
though the needs of India in every department of administration are yet
great and cannot be said to have been adequately met, yet substantial pro-
gress has been made, and the economic condition of the people, as a whole,
has materially improved. At the same time, he laments that the average
standard of life is still low, and that the national income is not yet sufficient,
in spite of improved distribution, to supply the needs of the population.
The need of India, as of Great Britain, is an increase of production. Mr.
Moreland's work is written in a clear, straightforward style ; it is a model
of lucidity, and is to be commended to all students of empire problems.
JOHN RAWSON ELDER.
DOUGLAS'S AENEID. By Lauchlan Maclean Watt, M.A. Pp. ix, 522.
8vo. Cambridge : University Press. 1920. 145. net.
THE author has done a real service to Scottish literature by this excellent,
clear and exhaustive study of the rendering of a great translation begun by
Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld in 1512, and finished by him two
months before the disaster of Flodden. He is careful to point out the
constant struggle at the time of its inception, and before it, among scholars
whether their best works should be composed in Latin or written in their
own vernacular. Douglas luckily decided on the latter, giving among
many other reasons that it would assist those who
Wald Virgill to children expone,
with the result that we have a magnificent specimen of the Scots tongue,
the literary medium of a cleric of noble birth and of the highest culture of
Watt: Douglas's Aeneid 327
his time. The fact of the tongue being Scottish has militated against the
full recognition of the writer's learning and power, as — to us — it is almost
as far removed from our present speech as Chaucer's English j and the
misfortunes of the Douglas family, as Anglophils, immediately after its
completion, prevented the poem gaining full popularity in Scotland itself.
The work remained wonderfully little known, till by a curious turn of the
wheel it was revived by the learned Jacobite coterie such as Bishop Sage
and Ruddiman, whose dislike to the Union with England made them
regard the Anglophil writer as a representative loyalist Scot of the past.
To comments on the texts, the descent of these, readings, and such
minutiae, the author has prefaced an admirable study, which should make
Douglas's version of the great Latin Epic more popular than it has ever
been before in Scotland, for he tells us of the medieval culte of Virgil
— opposed as it was by the Church — which we see best in Dante, and
which put the poet on a much more exalted plane than any other Latin
writer. This he illustrates excellently with many quotations from more
than forgotten writers, and shows us how the Scots version was conceived
and rendered. He has our best congratulations.
A. FRANCIS STEUART.
A NEW HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN. By R. B. Mowat, M.A. Part I.
Oxford : University Press. 1920.
IF history had always been taught this way it would have been the
pleasantest lesson. Here we have excellent narrative, neither precious nor
brought down to a childish level, and yet good. Interesting illustrations to
strike the eye and interest the intelligence, and so beget a real interest in
the historic text, and the text is very good. It is accurate, not verbose,
and adequate. The shortness sometimes makes one wish for more, and
one sometimes disagrees with the deductions, as in the one that after Mary
Queen of Scots' flight to England ' Elizabeth provided her with quarters,
and treated her well, until plots began to be formed by Catholics.' But
this is a small item. The book as a whole is excellent.
THE ANNUAL REGISTER : A Review of Public Events at Home and
Abroad for the Year 1919. Pp. xii, 240. 8vo. London: Longmans,
Green & Co. 1920. 305.
THIS annual goes on, through peace, through war, with unabating compact
stolidity, facing evil report and good and ending its year's work with the
consciousness that the survey of occurrences and of the trend of movement
they register is true to the phenomena. We are beginning the year with
a debate as to whether there is any such thing as Progress. Perhaps it is a
determined bias for the affirmative that makes a reviewer see in the tide-
marks of last year the happy indication that a sorely jostled world is settling
down again, returning to its ruts while really seeking to mend its ways, and
bidding fair to get through the long-drawn crisis without further cataclysm,
whereof we have had more than enough. The war recedes with changing
328 The Annual Register
perspective ; and the tumult of the peacemaking, the chaos and contro-
versy of reconstruction and the slow obstinate indisposition of a new
universe to reveal itself in the old, may be best seen in a year like that
under notice, without showy episodes. Yet the volume contains not only
the terms of the Peace Treaties with Germany and Austria, but includes
the tenor of that most ambitious and benignly purposed institution, the
League of Nations. The breakdown in President Wilson's health has
already proved itself a grave misfortune, and the fear that it may possibly
destroy the hopes of the world for the success of the League remains a
nightmare. Somehow there is reassurance in the fact that the year's
record runs so easily into the old moulds.
As usual, the Chronicle of Events is full and varied, though perhaps
Scotland ought to be allotted a larger attention. The notices of Literature
are on rather too select a scale to be representative. Under the head of
Science there is an adventurous but very nearly successful effort to explain
the remarkable new Einstein principle of Relativity. Useful notes appear on
art, the drama, finance and commerce, and an extensive obituary series
closes the text of a well-indexed and invaluable annual as comprehensive in
its range as it is intimate in its knowledge.
HEXHAM AND ITS ABBEY. By Charles Clement Hodges and John Gibsor
With 46 Illustrations. Hexham : Gibson & Son. 1919.
FEW places in England rival in picturesque structure and historical import-
ance the little Northumbrian town of Hexham on the Tyne, with it
abbey church of St. Andrew, once the seat of ecclesiastical authority of St
Wilfrid and Bishop Acca, with foundations of Roman-wrought stone frc
the adjacent ruins of Corstopitum, a military settlement of high consequence
in the Roman period.
The crypt of Hexham Abbey is with justice claimed as manifesting ir
company with the crypt at Ripon the characteristics of a structure designe
not for sepulture but for religious service. Its sombre impressiveness is
intensified by the inscribed tablet on which the deliberately erased but stil
faintly traceable name of the murdered emperor Geta recalls the animositie
or the remorse of the third century. As an architectural interpretatior
the handbook answers all requirements, tracing with indications of date tt
evolution of the whole series of buildings and making the structure a
intelligible process.
The body of illustrations, photographs, line drawings and large plans ot
the buildings, must be specially commended as a really beautiful tribute
the architectural and sculptural importance of what may be thought of
primarily St. Wilfrid's fane. A group showing the Acca and oth<
crosses, as well as sundry miscellaneous carved stones from Hexham, is
speaking testimony to the artistic importance of these relics from th(
seventh and eighth centuries, which are documents of account in the
controversy regarding the age of the interlaced sculptures of North Englanc
and the Border, of which the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses are th<
prime and stateliest examples. The cross of Acca takes its parallel place
honour even with those masterpieces of art which so clearly link the crafts-
Hexham and its Abbey 329
manship of the immediate successors of St. Cuthbert with the inherited and
continued traditions of Roman and Byzantine work.
But, as becomes, the centre of illustration is the church itself, and both
exterior and interior are lavishly and successfully portayed, bringing out the
incident detail of the girth-seat or * fridstol ' of sanctuary, the numerous
gravestones and effigies and medieval paintings still preserved, and the
distinctive medieval features which are among the architectural specialities
of the church. The Crypt (a very difficult subject) has been very happily
caught by the camera. A rendering of the Night Stair with a funeral slab
of a mounted triumphant Roman soldier set up at the foot of it marks a
possible connection with the usage of sanctuary of which so many grim
memories survive in the registers of Northumbrian churches to which the
old right of protection was general, though it gradually became restricted to
particular shrines, among which Beverley was probably the most dis-
tinguished. Mr. Hodges devoted so many years to the special study of the
abbey that the value of his work on it, whether considered as ecclesiology
or as an artistic record, is unique.
A few loose sentences should be rectified in any future edition. On
page 2 the text leaves us wondering how a triple circumvallation is a proof
of Roman occupation. On page 79 a sentence about plaster is unintelli-
gible. On page 81 a clause about the erased name of Geta is the direct
converse of what it was designed to convey. On page 125 an etymology
of Hencotes is a bad example of hybrid derivation. These are, however,
very small faults to find with an archaeological and pictorial register of
Hexham Abbey, which, while forming a capital historical memoir and a
faithful pictorial souvenir, does its best homage to the beautiful old place by
the enticement it offers to visit the shrine.
A SHORT HISTORY OF BELGIUM. By Leon Van der Essen. Second
Edition. Revised and enlarged, with a special chapter on Belgium
during the Great War. Pp. 198, with 9 Illustrations and 2 Maps.
Pott 8vo. University of Chicago Press. 1920. $1.50.
A SHORT historical sketch by the Professor of History in the University
of Louvain, which will be of service to the general reader.
It is inevitable that in a compilation of this kind, broad generalisation
should be laid down without the accompanying reservations, and that
aspects of the subject should be omitted, but after allowing for these
considerations the little volume remains of considerable interest.
A SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 1815-1918. By J. F.
Rees, M.A. Cr. 8vo. Methuen & Co., Ltd. 1920.
COMMENCING with a whimsical conversation on the changes of the country
between an aviator of the twentieth century and a Franciscan friar of the
fourteenth, Mr. Rees soon buckles to his serious task of showing the
changes in the outlook of Labour during the century between two great
wars. And very well he does it. He traces the evolution of the Trades
Union and the eventual recognition of the Trades Unions and all the
330 Social and Industrial History of England
changes that that has made. He shows the commencements of ameliora-
tion in the factory conditions, gradual philanthropy, and the attempts to
combat the ravages of unnecessary disease. Socialism in many forms
naturally takes up much of his book, nor are social nostrums like
Benthamism and Fabianism neglected. He wisely refuses to prophesy
anything from the social and industrial reactions imposed during the war,
but of these he gives an able summary. It is a book which can be enjoyed
even by those who hitherto knew but little of social and industrial condi-
tions in the history of their country, which they now know it is their
interest to study.
DRUIDS AND DRUIDISM. A List of References compiled by George F.
Black, Ph.D. Pp. 1 6. 410. New York : Public Library.
A LIST OF WORKS RELATING TO LYCANTHROPY. By the same. Pp. 7.
4to.
WE have already had occasion to refer to the excellent bibliographical
work done by Mr. Black in his List of Works relating to Scotland in the
New York Public Library (S.H.R. xiv, 286) published in 1916. And we
welcome these further slight contributions to the literature of Druidism and
the study of the Werewolf. In the latter Mr. Black notes an interesting
reference to this terrible form of superstition in the records of the Presbytery
of Kelso in 1660.
P. HUME BROWN, 1849-1918. By George Macdonald. Pp. 6. Large
8vo. London : Published for the British Academy by Humphrey
Milford. Oxford : University Press. 1920. is.
THOSE who thought they knew Hume Brown will gain new and delight-
ful impressions of their friend from this charming sketch of his life. And
for those who never met him these few pages by Dr. George Macdonald
will give an adequate and very discriminating picture of * an ideal scholar,
a companion of endless and indefinable charm.'
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND. Vol. 53.
Fifth series. Vol. 5. Pp. xxx, 239. 410. Edinburgh. 1910.
IN their hundred and thirty-ninth session, 1918-1919, the Scottish Anti-
quaries dealt with a full variety of topics, ranging from purely local remains
to the historical discussion of their general origins, and hus to the tracing
of the type they represent. To some minds the general proposition that
stands behind any monument makes a closer appeal than even the monu-
ment itself, and this probably is the sum and substance of the so-called
difference between archaeology and history. Thus the statues of Justice
and Mercy, once in the Old Parliament Hall at Edinburgh, and here
described by Dr. Thomas Ross, are a link by no means the last of the older
scriptural and later medieval pedigree of the daughters of God !
The double-headed eagle on the seals of Lanark Mr. Thomas Reid
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 3 3 1
essays to carry back to a tradition of Roman origin to the town, and he
parallels the adventurous suggestion with the case of Perth.
Mr. W. Douglas Simpson brings the Doune of Invernochty clearly into
the category of a mote which was once the head place (antiquam maneritm)
of its barony.
In like wise Mr. A. O. Curie shows that the famous Bass of Inverurie
contained in its base fragments of pottery of the fourteenth century, thus
indicating the probability that the great mound was still occupied then.
The conclusion he draws is that we have here another example of the
mount-and-bailey castle or mote, such as was introduced into England from
Normandy by William the Conqueror, and brought into Scotland by the
Anglo-Norman nobles who came northward in the reigns of David I. and
William the Lion.
Long a mystery, and indeed still far from emancipated from mystery, the
ancient wooden traps, first made the theme and theory by Dr. Munro in
his Lake Dwellings (1890), now receive developed scrutiny from Dr. Munro
and Mr. Patrick Gillespie, the latter of whom puts forward the picture of
a deer caught in some such structure as shown on an interlaced cross-slab
at Clonmacnois. It is tempting to think it possible that the group of nine
of these traps at Larkhill might be explained by their serving as the
objective or point of capture in a deer-drive similar to the well-known
tinchel or tainchel in the Scottish Highlands.
Dealing with a collection of Anglo-Saxon sculptured and inscribed crosses
at Hartlepool, we have from Professor Baldwin Brown an important study
of their type of cross with central circle and semi-circle or circular
terminals, and a contention that this form did not originate in Ireland, but
was an importation there. The proposition negatives an assumption of
Celtic priority in matters artistic which has dislocated the true relationships
of early crosses of Northumbrian type.
Gravestone heraldry even from the Orkneys scarcely encourages broad
inferences, but Mr. Storar Clouston dares to be allegorical in interpreting
the coat (Peterson ?) on a slab in St. Magnus Cathedral, though he is much
more genealogical in his examination of sundry shields of Stewart, Sinclair,
Kincaid, Reid and Couper.
Dr. George Macdonald unearths from the papers of the antiquary
Richard Gough, preserved in the Bodleian Library, the ' Minute Book of
the Minor Society of Scottish Antiquaries.' Dating from 1783 and ter-
minating in 1785, and with more than a dash of burlesque in its short-
lived series of proceedings, it was a derivative of the major society, founded
in 1780 and still happily a strong antiquarian force.
THE SECRET TREATIES OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, 1879-1914. By Dr.
Alfred Franzis Pribram, Professor of History in the University of
Vienna. English Edition by Archibald Cary-Coolidge, Harvard
University. Pp. xvii, 308. 8vo. Cambridge : Harvard University
Press. 1920. 2 dollars.
THIS is the first volume of a series and contains the Texts of the Treaties
themselves, translated by Denys P. Myers and J. G. D'Arcy Paul for the
332 The Secret Treaties of Austria-Hungary
benefit of future historians. There is also an introduction by Dr. Pribram
on the history of the Triple Alliance — of Germany, Austria-Hungary and
Italy — from its inception to the defection of the latter during the late
world-war. The Editor points out that, though from the Austrian point
of view the introduction is dispassionately written ; we can, however,
detect anti-Italian feeling here and there.
RAPPORTS FAITS AUX CONFERENCES DE LA HAVE DE 1899 ET 1907.
Avec une introduction de James Brown Scott. Pp. xxv, 952.
JUDICIAL SETTLEMENT BETWEEN STATES OF THE AMERICAN UNION. By
the same. Large 8vo. Oxford : Clarendon Press. 1920.
OF these two monumental volumes published by the Carnegie Endow-
ment for International Peace, the second is of far the greater importance.
The first — since the Great War — seems rather vieux jeuy though valuable
as an attempt to bring about an Ideal. The second is the record ot
an accomplished fact, being an analysis of cases decided in the Supreme
Court of the United States, with a clearly written account of the legal
relations of the States to one another.
A CHALLENGE TO HISTORIANS. By P. T. Godsal. Pp. 62. 8vo. Eton :
Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co., Ltd. 1918. 2s. net.
MEN of military education are apt to believe that when they turn to
ancient problems of campaigns and fortifications the permanent geographical
data are enough, when interpreted by modern science, to enable them to
reconstruct the marches of Hannibal into Italy, and of Caesar into Gaul as
definitely as the movements of Charles VIIL, or Napoleon I. in Lombardy.
Mr. Godsal objects to John Richard Green and others that they follow
* the literary evidence ' instead of the political indications, and the topo-
graphical inferences of, let us say, an adjutant of volunteers. The
adjutant in the present case maintains that the Anglo-Saxon invasion under
Hengist and Horsa ' advanced past London and up the valley of the
Thames.' * Military principles ' are adduced for this conclusion, which
admittedly is not based on the literary evidence, that is to say of the
historians and others whom we have all hitherto followed as pro tanto the
best available authorities. Earthworks too, the dykes named after Woden,
Grim and Offa, are, although mostly of much later date, appealed to as part
of the case against the written evidence. Should not the enunciation
of * military principles,' however, have begun by demonstrating that
Hengist and Horsa were masters of them ? Major Godsal awaits the
verdict of historians : they will, we fear, be unable to affirm his 'principles'
as superseding the literary interpretation of history.
ENGLAND UNDER THE YORKISTS, 1460-1485. By Isobel D. Thornly, M.A.
Crown 8vo. London : Longmans, Green & Co. 1920. 95. 6d. net.
ONE welcomes gladly the increasing number of excellent 'Source Books'
to supply, as is said in the preface to this excellent one on the days of the
Thornly: England under the Yorkists 333
hite Rose of York, the teacher * with material for his discourse, and
e student with food for historical reasoning.' In this book we have
means of discovering from contemporary accounts what happened during
,t period in England in the political, constitutional, ecclesiastical, and
:onomic spheres, with an additional chapter on Ireland, then as now full
of unrest. To this the editor continues an account of her authorities
and whence they come. One is reminded how different the English
tongue was then all through the extracts, thus :
' Who that is lettred sufficiantly
Rulethe meche withoute swerde obeiceantly,'
and one notices the growing troubles with the clergy, 'and the Kynge
toke a grete party on thys mater, for thes fryers hadde causyd moche
trobylle a monge hys pepill,' and later the heresy trials which led to the
' brennynge ' of several victims who * dyspysyd the Sacrament of the Auter.'
We learn much of the Staple and the Hanse ; and the accounts of marriage
contracts, sumptuary laws, and education show how well and from what
varied sources the editor has selected her illustrations of the social and
political life of the period.
Introduction to the Study of Russian History , by W. F. Reddaway. This
(No. 25) of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, { Helps for
Students of History,' is useful and adequate both about the history of
Russia and the Russian language. The author makes a curious slip when
he writes on page 9 the name ' Challoner ' for that of Chancellor the
English * discoverer ' of Russia.
Select Passages Illustrating Commercial and Diplomatic Relations between
England and Russia, by A. Wenier, M.A., Fr.Hist.S., S.P.C.K. This
work (Texts for Students, No. 17) fills a gap. It commences with the
Willoughby-Chancellor ( discovery ' of Russia, and the consequent forma-
tion of the Muscovy Company. Friendly with the Stuarts, relations were
suspended in the time of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and again
Peter the Great was brouille with George I. The Crimean War was the
next breach, and though there was constant fear of Russia by Britain a
series of agreements ended in an alliance in 1914. The selection of the
illustrations of this history of these diplomatic relations has been made
with care.
Selections from the Historia Rerum Anglicarum of William of Newburgh,
by Charles Johnson, M.A. This is another of the useful * Texts for
Students,' and gives the work of William, a canon of the Augustinian
priory of Newburgh, near Coxwold. Born 1136, he entered the monastery
and wrote his work between 1189 and 1198. His history is mainly com-
pilation, but it has original features, and in these selections these are brought
out as well as the writer's speciality as a stylist.
Dramatic Aspects of Medieval Folk Festivals in England, by Charles Read
Bashervill. It is interesting to see how the ludi of the people became
334 Current Literature
mingled with the ' mummeries ' and the Church festivals. The writer
holds that ' there was no very marked change in the general type of the
games from the early fourteenth century to their rapid decay during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.' He is certain, however, that until
the sixteenth century the folk games and sports flourished with a vigour
and a zest that the Church itself could not combat.
The Newcastle Society of Antiquaries, like our Scottish Society, is care-
taker of a splendid archaeological collection. But at Newcastle the Society
has the advantage of possessing for its museum not only the keep, which
dates from 1172-1177, but also the Black-gate tower, mainly constructed in
the thirteenth century. Mr. Parker Brewis has written a capital account
of the evolution of the fortress of Newcastle in a well-illustrated Guide to
the Castle of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in two parts, the first (31 pp.) dealing with
* The Keep ' and the second (35 pp.) descriptive of the ' Black Gate and
Heron Pit' Simultaneously there has come out a reissue of an equally
important aid to the antiquarian visitor, viz.: the Catalogue of the Inscribed
and Sculptured Stones of the Roman Period belonging to the Society and
preserved in the Black-gate Museum. This is the third edition of a work
first written by Dr. Collingwood Bruce in 1857, re-edited by him with the
assistance of Mr. Robert Blair, the secretary of the Society, in 1 887, and now
once more after an interval re-edited by Mr. Blair, who has much extended
this handbook to the greatest Roman collection in Great Britain. The
second edition had 99 octavo pages, 208 items, and 171 illustrations: the
present version has expanded to 135 quarto pages, 264 items, and at least
197 illustrations. The most recently discovered stones are for the most
part shown by photo-process plates, ensuring a fidelity which the otherwise
admirable old line engravings could not attain. To be re-editor of so
crucial a volume as this after so long a period as thirty-three years is some-
thing of a record. The present reviewer recalls his first meeting with Mr.
Blair studiously journeying about thirty years ago per lineam valli and
hails him with pleasure again. Our antiquaries in Scotland may well doff
their caps to the veteran secretary of the Newcastle Society. Glasgow
recently made him an honorary member of the Archaeological Society, and
the Scottish Historical Review may equally tender him its congratulations
and respects. The new catalogue is an excellent conspectus of the imposing
collection of Roman memorials. By the additions and corrective annotations
it excellently continues, brings down to date and enhances the Bruce
tradition which is still honoured in Northumberland.
Professor Firth raises constraining questions in his British Academy
paper, The Political Significance of Gulliver's Travels (Humphry Milford.
Pp. 23. is. 6d. net). It compels answer, and the answer must needs be
that in considerable part the case is made out that Gulliver's voyages are
veiled satirical history, written at different times and sarcastically reflecting
successive movements. To 1714 belong references to Nottingham, Presi-
dent of the Council, who figures in Gulliver as * Bolgolam.' Resuming
his pen some six years later, Swift (as Prof. Firth interprets him) makes
Current Literature 335
Gulliver the parallel of Bolingbroke. Five years or so further and Sir
Robert Walpole, as ' Flimnap,' and in connection with green threads of
silk hinting at the Order of the Thistle, has plainly supplied the substance
of some sly allusions. But the chief theme of direct and continuous
political suggestion arises from the recognition of the Yahoos as the indi-
genous Irish, while Laputa was England. The work is to be interpreted
in layers, and the tone changes with each, for the history of the years 1713-
1726 gives the events reflected in Swift's masterpiece, which, on its appear-
ance in 1726, had an instantaneous and overwhelming success. These
positions of Prof. Firth are of the utmost importance for true literary
criticism, as must be evident from a glance, let us say, at Leslie Stephen's
chapter on Gulliver, in which there is no suggestion whatever of the
current satire, which was the sauce to Swift's brilliant and occasionally bitter
travesty of a topsy-turvy world.
In the English Historical Review for April Miss R. R. Reid rigorously
examines ' Barony and Thanage,' emphasising the factors that indicate a
historic unity. But her attention is specially turned to cornage, and the
rediscussion leads her to adopt the conclusions of Canon Wilson and to
reject the opposing solution offered by Professor Lapsley (S.H.R. ii, in).
She favours the identification of cornage with drengage, and explains various
features of border tenure by the development of the barony courts and the
characteristic jurisdictions of castellaries, such as Clitheroe, Pontefract and
Richmond.
Wellington's action as British ambassador at the Congress of Verona in
1822 is scrutinised by J. E. S. Green, who shows how his hand was forced
by an indiscretion of Chateaubriand, which brought about the collapse of
British policy. Miss M. Prescott traces early examples of 'Teste Me
Ipso,' which point to a fairly common and regulated use of the formula
ante 1 1 88 (see S.H.R. xv, 265, 359). Miss Cole-Baker searches out the
birth year of the Emperor Henry VIL, probably 1278 or 1279. Charles
Johnson edits a scroll of the Truce of Bishopthorpe, 1323. In Bain's
Calendar, iv, No. 387, this fragment was tentatively assigned to the year
1388. The correction is important, and appears to be absolutely sub-
stantiated. A detailed notice of Thomas Harding, 1516-1572, the Roman
Catholic adversary of Bishop Jewel, is given by H. De Vocht. A lost
portion of Herbert of Bosham's MS. Life of Thomas a Becket is recovered
and re-edited by Theodore Craib.
These items do not exhaust a varied and interesting issue.
The Juridical Review for March had two articles by Lord Guthrie, then
still happily vigorous ; and both articles reflect the genial optimistic spirit
and the turn for hero worship which made his Lordship a force in any
biographical estimate he formed, whether it was that of John Knox,
Thomas Carlyle, David Laing, or R. L. Stevenson. First of the two
papers is a personal reminiscence of Charles E. Green (died 6th Jan. 1920),
late founder and editor of the Review. It briefly yet intimately sketches
a most energetic and influential career, which revived not a few memories
336 Current Literature
of Edinburgh as a great publishing centre. The personal aspect of Mr.
Green mainly occupies attention, and the notice is at once sympathetic and
critical. Of wider appeal is the second paper, being a further instalment
of a special contribution on R. L. Stevenson, enriched with many quota-
tions from his correspondence, several facsimile letters, every one of them
characteristic, and numerous photographs, particularly the * intense and
brooding * snapshot taken by Lloyd Osbourne, which is far and away the
most impressive and expressive picture of Stevenson that the present critic
has ever seen. The article glows with appreciation and enthusiasm, and is
perhaps the happiest product of Lord Guthrie's pen.
Mr. Roughead, writing on ' The Last Tulzie,' recalls the rather third-
rate episode of an Edinburgh students' riot, and the prosecution that fol-
lowed and failed.
The Rev. Thomas Miller, writing on * Tithes,' has possibly made a
great historical discovery, but it is preferable to suspect that it partakes of
the nature of a mare's nest. GEO. NEILSON.
In the January issue of the American Historical Review Mr. W. R.
Thayer discusses certain Fallacies in History, not confined to those of
German origin. Mr. E. R. Byrne writes an elaborate and heavily vouched
paper on Genoese Trade with Syria in the twelfth century. Out of it
he constructs a highly informing chapter of trading history in the Mediter-
ranean from about 1150, when a remarkable expansion began which,
under the influence of the family group known as the Visconti, acquired
for Genoa a complete predominance in the rich traffic of the East. Mr.
Marcus W. Jernegan, writing on ' Slavery and the Beginnings of Indus-
trialism in the American Colonies,' presents a large body of facts indicative
of the integral place filled by slave labour in the development of manu-
facture in the pre-revolutionary American States. The negro artisan had
his critics, but his standard of skill, efficiency, and application was high
enough to make him a most important and successful factor in production.
His industrial discipline, the article contends, prepared the way for his
freedom, lessened the shock when it came, and * laid the foundation for
his later status in a modern industrial and agricultural society.' A strong
feature of this magazine is its extended and admirably intelligent survey
of the main .course of periodical historical publications throughout the
world. It provides quarterly, under the head of Historical News, over
forty most readable pages of crisp notices of current writings on history
and allied themes. In this respect our American contemporary has no
rival in Europe.
The Revue Historique for November-December, 1919, opens with an
important article by MM. Maurice and Marcel Dussan on U Armee d'aprh
guerre il y a cent ans, which has a double interest. It deals with the dis-
banding of the forces of France after Waterloo, and it throws some light
on the admirable role played by that distinguished Franco-Scot, Marshal
Macdonald, Duke of Tarento. M. Halphen follows with the final instal-
Current Literature
337
ment of his weighty series of studies on the history of Charlemagne. The
Bulletin historique deals with recent German publications on the Reforma-
tion period, a field which has not been surveyed for five years. Professor
Vaughan's edition of Rousseau's Contrat Social is favourably reviewed by
M. Bemont, and M. Rod. Reuss deals at some length, but with reserve,
with Macmillan's Protestantism in Germany. M. Castelot provides an
interesting notice of Grant Robertson's Bismarck. The number contains
a resume" (in six pages) of the Scottish Historical Review from April 1918,
to October 1919.
The Revue Historique for January-February 1920 opens with an article,
by M. Alfred Hachette, on <L 'Affaire Mique,' a French 'Tichborne
Case,' which links in a strange manner the sailing of Prince Charles
Edward for the adventure of the '45 with the French Revolution. M. E.
Mangis prints and comments on a new document of great interest to students
of the Fronde, Pierre Lallemant's account of what occurred at the Hotel-
de-Ville on 4th July 1652. Items of Northern interest are provided by
M. Paul Vaucher in * Le Bicentenaire de la mort de Charles XII,' and by
M. Gaston Cahen in * Deux ambassades chinoises in Russie au commence-
ment du XVIIP siecle.' The Chronique contains a biographical sketch of
the late M. Jacques Flach, the erudite, if dogmatic, author of Les origines
de Uancienne France, the fifth volume of which is in the press.
The Archivum Franciscanum Historicum for July-October, 1919 (xii
fasc. 3 and 4) contains among the Documenta an instalment of the
Bullarium Sacri Conventus S. Francisci Assisiensis, which offers one point of
Scottish interest. On i6th April, 1643, Urban VIII. granted a Bull
in favour of a foundation for Scottish students treated by William Thomson,
a Scotsman, minister provinciae Angliae. The document is cautiously
worded and narrates : ' quod ipse qui, ut assent, alias spatio 30 annorum
Missionarius apostolicus in Scotiae et Angliae regnis fuit et ex illis per alias
septemdecim annos Capellani munus carissimae in Christo filiae nostrae Hensi-
ettae (sic) Mariae magnae Brittaniae reginae obivit? Thomson reserved
a liferent of the foundation for himself. It will be noticed that Thomson
described himself as Chaplain to Queen Henrietta Maria. Now, Gardiner
relates that on 3Oth March, 1643 the Commons sent a committee to arrest
the Capuchins at Somerset House, and to tear down the images in the
chapel. (History of the Civil War, i. 102.) Research in the Roman
Catholic records of the period will probably throw some light on the
fortunes of Thomson's foundation.
Reference may also be made to an interesting note by Dr. Walter W.
Seton on The Italian Version of the Legend of Saint Clare by the Florentine
Ugolino Fesini, of which the writer announces an edition.
DAVID BAIRD SMITH.
Notes and Communications
MACBETH or MACHETH (S.H.R. xvii. 155). There are persons
who 'step in where angels fear to tread.' No one has stepped into the
trap set in your January issue about Macbeth and MacHeth.
I will, however, do so with what wariness I may.
Macbeth got into the pedigree decently enough by marrying a widow
MacHeth, Gruoch, the relict of a Moray Mormaer. With her, Macbeth
got Moray for himself in his path from the thanage of Crumbachtyn, or
Cromarty, towards higher things, to which on Duncan I.'s death a way
was opened for him as a scion of the Royal line of Malcolm II.
Our historians do not confuse us between Heth and Beth. Au contraire
they waste themselves in distinguishing the two ; and quite rightly.
Into that subject, if one went, one might pour volumes. So one returns
to the conundrums of your inquirer. Macbeth is really the * Son of Life ' :
MacHeth is the ( Son of Fire.' Macbeth hailed from Cromarty : MacHeth
from Moray opposite. Next for the assertion * But Macbeth, not MacHeth
survives.' Say that in Strathnaver ! If you try it, your life will not be
worth an hour's purchase. For is not the genitive of * Aedh ' or ' Heth,'
' Aoidh,' and is not the name Mackay ' the son of Aedh,' and did not the
Clan come from Moray after the dispersion of the Moray men following
the terrible defeat of Stracathro in 1130, when Angus MacHeth, said to be
son of Lulach, Gruoch's son (?) was slain with 4000 of his kin ?
Let your inquirer read pp. 15 to 27 of the Book of Mackay. The
name MacHeth survives in Strathnaver as Mackay, and in another rem-
nant of the dispersed, the Mackies of Galloway, and in the Mackays of
Holland, whence Lord Reay. And it survives also as Eason and Esson,
all sons of ' Aedh,' * lye,' or « I.'
Your inquirer knows far more about the authorities than most people,
but he may like to look again at Skene's Highlanders (Macbain's Notes)
pp. 404-5 ; Skene's Celtic Scotland, vol. i. p. 399 note ; Laurie's Annals,
pp. 1 1- 1 2 ; Robertson's Early Kings, vol. i. p. 184 ; Laurie's Early Charters,
pp. 30 and 44 and notes 283-4, and the Charters and Annals quoted.
And was not our defeated friend Magbiodr of the first battle of Skida
myre in the Orkney inga Saga, circa 965, a Macbeth ?
JAMES GRAY.
53 Montagu Square, W.
MACBETH or MACHETH. Mr. Gray's most informing communi-
cation leaves, however, my real point untouched. Shortly stated, it is this :
Macbeth or Macbeth 339
Macbeth's stepson's daughter married one who is named c Ed,' * Head '
or ' Beth '. Apparently this individual's existence is the only proof that the
Heths were denizens of Moray — the Scots Peerage, Vol. VI. 285, calls it an
'alleged connection.' Clearly if his name was 'Beth,' as it appears in
two contemporary charters, the so-called MacHeth pretenders were really
MacBeths, and our historians do confuse us by using both forms.
It is interesting to learn the meaning of MacHeth, which I had else-
where failed to obtain. In this form the name is certainly extinct, as I
wrote : I do not gather that Mr. Gray holds otherwise.
C. SANFORD TERRY.
The University, Aberdeen.
SCOTS PEERAGE. The new Scots Peerage edited by Sir James
Balfour Paul is invaluable. May I suggest the following additions or
corrections under the articles BLANTYRE and GALLOWAY.
The Scots Peerage under Blantyre. Vol. ii., p. 78, line 31 leaves a
blank for the second son's name. A deed of maritagium shows that it was
Richard.
* A Lettre maid to Robert Abbot of Paslay, and Jonet Flemyng, the
relict of umquhile Johne Stewart of Mynto, knycht, and to the langar
levand of thaim and thair assynais ane or maa, of the gift of the manage of
Robert Stewart, the sone and aire of umquhile the said Johne, and failzein
of him the manage of Richard Stewart, his bruther, and failzein of him
the mariage of ony uthir aire or aires male that sail succeed to
their heretage.' Reg. Sec. Sig. vol. i. p. 372, (2446), 22nd November,
1512.
Under Galloway, vol. iv. p. 153, after line 3 should be inserted
* and a natural son John.' He received letters of legitimation, 26th May,
1517.
And on page 152, line 25 of the same article, Alexander Stewart should
be designated Sir Alexander Stewart.
' Preceptum Legitimations facte cum consensu gubernatoris Joanni
Stewart, bastardo, filio naturali quondam Alexandri Stewart de Gariles
militis etc. in communi forma. Per Signitum. Reg. Sec. Sig. vol. i.
P- 455 (2913)-
On page 155, line 3, of the article, after Commendator, delete the
remainder of the sentence and insert : ' He was alive in 1580, was evidently
dead by 1584, and proved so in 1586.'
9 June 1580. Action by Margaret Stewart, Mistress of Uchiltrie against
(inter alios) Alexander Stewart of Garleis, elder, Anthonie Stewart, and
Robert Stewart, sons of the said Laird of Garlics . . . P.C.R. vol. Hi.
p. 292.
6 Oct. 1584. Complaint of Beigis Wyise against (inter alios) Dame
Katherein Stewart, Lady Garlics, eldar, Anthone, Robert, and Williame
Stewartis, hir sonnis, . . . P.C.R. vol. iii. p. 694.
34° Scots Peerage
2 Apl. 1586. Caution by Alexander Stewart of Garleis, for Anthone
and Williame Steuartis, sons of the late Alexander Steuart of Garleis, that
Begis Wyis . . . P.C.R. vol. iv. p. 60.
13 Oxford Terrace, ROBERT STEWART.
Gateshead-on-Tyne.
PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW (S.H.R. i.
457 j v- 3^9> 5°° > vi. 2 1 8). — There is a strange difficulty in stating definitely
the dates of the different appointments to the office of the University Printer
in the earlier years of the nineteenth century. Mr. Duncan and Mr. Khull
both held that office, and in this connection the attention of the Editor has
been called through the kindness of Mr. John Robertson, secretary of the
Glasgow Typographical Society, to a curious entry in the minutes of the
Society, dated 6th September, 1817. The point dealt with is a case of
discipline. The minute states that 'After the business was over, the
question of a former evening was resumed, viz ; the passing a vote of
Censure on D Dunlop for his scandalous behaviour towards the Society
* After some speechifying it was carried nem. con. that a vote of Censure
should be passed on the said David Dunlop late treasurer, for the disrespect
he had shown the Society in not coming forward on a former Meeting
night, according to the purport of his Card which is wrote on a preceding
page ; and also for not apologizing this evening when he came to pay up
the money he had among his hands. And further, for going to the Office
of Messrs. Khull & Co and vilifying the Characters of the President,
Secretary and the other Members in the University Office.'
This looks as if Mr. Khull was University printer in 1817, but it may
be that the recalcitrant Dunlop went to Khull's workshop in order to
spread evil reports as to his fellow-workers who worked elsewhere in the
University Press.
Academy, Publications by the
British,
Acta Dominorum Concilii, by
George Neilson and Henry
Paton,-
Adam, Margaret L, The Causes
of the Highland Emigrations
of 1 783-1803, -
Alexander called the Schyrmes-
chur, by J. H. Stevenson,
American Colonies, The Quit
Rent System in the,
American Historical Association,
Annual Report of the,
American Historical Review, 153,
Anglo-French Review,
Annual Register, The,
Antiquaries of Scotland, Proceedings
of the Society of, - - 62,
Archaeologia Aeliana, - - 64,
Archivum Franciscanum Historicum,
154,
Armada, The Spanish Story of
the, by W. P. Ker,
Australian History, A Source
Book of, by G. H. Swin-
burne,
Baronial Opposition to Edward II.,
by James Conway Davies,
Bashervill, C. R., Dramatic Aspects
of Medieval Folk Festivals in
England,
Bedwell, C. E. A., Scottish
Middle Templars, 1604-1869,
Belgium, A Short History of, by
L. Van der Essen,
Bellenden's Translation of the
Index
History of Hector Boece, by R. W.
247 Chambers and Walter W.
Seton, 5
Black, G. F., Druids and Druidism,
50 330 ; Lycanthropy, - 330
Boece, Hector, Bellenden's Trans-
lation of the History of, by R.W.
73 Chambers and Walter W.
Seton, 5 ; quoted, - 254
158 Bond, B. W., The Quit-Rent
System in the American Colonies, 321
321 Bonet-Maury, Gaston, - - 70
Book of the Old Edinburgh Club,
244 1917-1918, - 90
336 Bookman, The, - - 72
70 Brakel, S. Van, A Neglected
327 Source for the History of the
Commercial Relations be-
330 tween Scotland and the
240 Netherlands, i
Brown, P. Hume, Surveys of
337 Scottish History', 237; bio-
graphical note, by George
165 Macdonald, - 330
Bruton, F. A., The Story of Peter-
loo, - 150
66 Bryce, W. Moir, Burgh Muir of
Edinburgh, - - 90
Buchanan, The Sacred Bard of the
55 Scottish Highlands,- - 246
Canadian Self-Goveinment, British
333 Supremacy and, by J. L.
Morrison, - 139
Candole, A. de, The Faith of a
117 Subaltern, - - 245
Carlisle Cathedral, Con-
329 stitutional Growth of, by Rev.
Canon Wilson, - - 199
341
II
342
Index
Carnegie Endowment for Inter-
national Peace, - - 245, 332
Chambers, R. W. and Walter W.
Seton, Bellenden's Translation
of the History of Hector Boece, 5
Clark, John, review by, - - 242
Classical Life in Scotland in the
Sixteenth Century, by Sir J.
Balfour Paul, - 177
Clouston, J. Storer, The Orkney
Townships,- - 16
Coins in use in Scotland in the
Sixteenth Century, note on
by J. Storer Clouston, - - 156
Cole, G. A. J., Ireland the Outpost, 151
Commercial Relations between
Scotland and the Netherlands,
A Neglected Source for the
History of the, by S. Van
Brakel, i
Corbett, Sir Julian S., Naval
Operations, - 310
Covenanters, Lord Guthrie and
the, by D. Hay Fleming, - 46
Cowane, John, Life of, - - 65
Craigie, W. A., Sheer Cloth'd, - 248
Crosraguel, Abbey, The Mint of, 163
Current Literature, 69, 152, 246, 335
Davies, James Conway, Baronial
Opposition to Edward II., - 55
Dicey, A. V., and Rait, R. S.,
Thoughts on the Union between
England and Scotland, - 317
Distaff Side, The: A Study in
Matrimonial Adventure in the
fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies, by Sir Bruce Seton, - 272
Dixon, W. Macneile, The Navy
in the Great War, - 310
Douglas's Aeneid, by Lauchlan
MacL. Watt, - - 326
Druids and Druidism, by G. F.
Black,- - 330
Dunstaffhage Castle, by J. R. N.
Macphail, - - 253
Edinburgh Burgh Muir, - - 90
Edinburgh Funeral in 1785, An,
note on by D. Hay Fleming, - 156
Edinburgh, Old, by Sir James
Balfour Paul, 90
Elder, John Rawson, review by, 326
English Historical Review,
69, 152, 246, 335
English Village, The, by Julia
Paton, 322
Essen, L. Van der, A Short
History of Belgium, - 329
Europe, A History of, 1862-1914,
by L. H. Holt and A. W.
Chilton, - 58
Faith of a Subaltern, The, by A.
de Candole, 245
Farquharson Genealogies, by A. M.
Macintosh, - - 60
Fenwick Improvement of Know-
ledge Society, 1834-1842, 118, 219
Fenwick Emigration Society,
Minutes of, 1839, - 221
Firth, C. H., Tolitical Significance
of Gulliver's Travels, - - 334
Fleming, D. Hay, Lord Guthrie
and the Covenanters, 46 ;
Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston
of Wariston, 138; An Edin-
burgh Funeral in 1785, - 156
Fletcher, C. R. L. and E. Walker,
Historical Portraits, 1700-1850, 65
Forbes Baron Court Book, 1659-
1678, - 236
Fornvannen, - -151
Fowler, W. Warde, Roman Essays
and Interpretations, - 320
French Quarterly, - - 70, 247
Future, The, - 72
Galloway, The Bishop of, corre-
spondence, 1679-1685, - 235
Gibson, John, and C. C. Hodges,
Hexham and its Abbey, - - 328
Glasgow Archaeological Society,
Catalogue of the Library of, - 152
Godsal, P. T., A Challenge to
Historians, - 332
Gray James, Macbeth or Mac-
heth, - 338
Greek Vase Painting, A Handbook
of, by Mary A. B. Herford, - 1 50
Index
343
Gooch, G. P., Germany and the
French Revolution, -
Greenwell, William, D.C.L, Por-
trait, -
Gulliver's Travels, Political Sig-
nificance of, by C. H. Firth, -
Guthrie, Lord, and the Coven-
anters, by D. Hay Fleming, -
Hamilton, Lord Ernest, Eliza-
bethan Ulster,
Harrison, J., LL.D., The History
of the Monastery of the Holy-Rood
and of the Palace of Holy rood
House,
Hazen, C. D., Fifty Tears of
Europe,
Herford, Mary A. B., A Hand-
book of Greek Vase Painting,
Hexham and its Abbey, by C. C.
Hodges and John Gibson,
Highland Emigrations of 1783-
1803, The Causes of the, by
Margaret I. Adam,
H ill, Ninian, The Story of the
Scottish Church from Earliest
Times ; A Sidelight on the 1715,
Historia Re rum Anglic arum,
Selections from, by C. Johnson,
Historical Portraits, 1700-1850 by
C. R. L. Fletcher and Emery
Walker,
History, - - 69,
History, Helps for Students of,
History of the Commercial Re-
lations between Scotland and
the Netherlands, by S. Van
Brakel, -
Hodges, C. C., and John Gibson,
Hexham and its Abbey
Holt, L. H., and A. W. Chilton,
A History of Europe 1862-1914,
Holyrood, Monastery of,-
Hope, Sir James, Diary of,
Iowa Journal, - - 72,
Irish Academy, Proceedings of the
Royal, -
Jastrow, Morris, A Gentle Cynic,
Johnston, Hilda, review by,
PAGE PAGE
Johnston of Wariston, Diary of Sir
324 Archibald, edited by D. Hay
Fleming, LL.D., - 138
64 Jones, P. van Brunt, The House-
hold of a Tudor 'Nobleman, - 68
334 Juridical Review, - - 71, 335
46 Keith, Theodora, review by, - 148
Ker, W. P., The Spanish Story of
the Armada, 165 ; Sir Walter
6 1 Scott, - - 246
Kilmaron Family, of Fife, note
on by J. H. Stevenson, - - 157
141 Lamond, Robert, review by, - 237
Latin Epigraphy, by Sir J. E.
146 Sandys, - 59
Lews, The Book of the, by W. C.
150 Mackenzie, - - 62
Lesdain, B. de, Notes sur tHeraldi-
328 que du Royaume-Uni, - - 323
Love, Mary, review by, 57
Lowell, J. R., Commemoration of
73 Centenary of Birth of, - - 67
Lycanthropy, A List of Works relating
to, by G. F. Black, - 330
225
Macbean, Lachlan, Buchanan the
333 Highland Bard, - - 246
Macbeth or Macheth, notes on by
C. Sanford Terry, 155, 338;
65 by J. Gray, - 338
152 Macdonald, Dr. George, Report
68 on the Mint of Crosraguel
Abbey, 163; bibliographical
sketch of P. Hume Brown, 330;
review by, - - 320
I MacGill, W., review by, - • - 62
Mackenzie, W. C. The Book of the
328 Lews, - -62
Macintosh, A. M., Farquharson
58 Genealogies, - - 60
141 Macphail, J. R. N., Dunstaffnage
235 Castle, - 253
M'Lachlan, H., The Methodist
1 5 3 Unitarian Movement, - -151
Main, Rev. Archibald, review
241 by, - - 144
Makculloch and Gray MSB., Pieces
67 from the, edited by George
55 Stevenson, - - 145
344
Index
Manchester Grammar School, The,
1515-1915, by A. A. Mum-
ford, - - 242
Marriott, J. A. R., The Right to
Work,- 147
Marshall, Andrew, reviews by,
Maseres, Letters, The, edited by
W. Stewart Wallace, - - 67
Miller, S. N., review, by, - - 59
Mint of Crosraguel Abbey, note
on report, by Dr. George Mac-
donald of, - - 163
Monastery of the Holy -Rood and of
the Palace of Holyrood House
History of the, by John Harrison,
LL.D., 141
Moncreiff, C. Scott, The Song of
Roland, - 243
Moncrieff, W. G. Scott, reviews
by, 148,238,241,324
Moreland, W. H., India at the
death of Akbar, - 326
Morison, J. L., British Supremacy
and Canadian Self -Government, - 139
Morris, D. B., The Stirling Mer-
chant Gild 6?
Mumford, A. A., The Manchester
Grammar School, I 5 i 5-191 5, - 242
Mowat, R. B., A New History of
Great Britain, - 327
Nancy, University of, Scottish
historical works presented to, 161
Navy in the Great War, The, by
W. Macneile Dixon, - 310
Neilson, Dr. George, Acta Domin-
orum Concilii, 50 ; Introduction
and Note on Fenwick
Improvement of Knowledge
Society, 1 18, 222 ; reviews by,
60, 64, 145, 240, 243, 321,
322, 335
Netherlands, History of the Com-
mercial Relations between Scot-
land and the, by S. Van Brakel, I
Newcastle Society of Antiquaries, 334
Norse Manuscripts in Edinburgh,
Dublin and Manchester, Cata-
logue of, - 152
Notes and Communications, - 338
Old Lore Miscellany, - -71
Orkney Townships, The, by
J. Storer Clouston, - 16
Palgrave, Sir F., History of Nor-
mandy and England, - 52
Palmenton and the Hungarian Revo-
lution, by C. F. Sproxton, 1 50
Paton, Henry, Acta Dominorum
Concilii, - 50
Paton, Julia, The English Village, 322
Paul, Sir J. Balfour, Old Edin-
burgh, 90; Clerical Life in Scot-
land in the Sixteenth Century,
177 ; Social Life in Scotland
in the Sixteenth Century, 296;
reviews by, - - 141, 323
Pax, - 151
Peterloo, The Story of, by F. A.
Bruton, - 1 50
Pictish Nation, The, by Archibald
B. Scott, - - 5 7
Poincare, Rectorial Address by
M. Raymond, - 147
Pollard, A. F., A Short History of
the Great War, - - 239
Poole, Captain Charles, of H.M.S.
Pearl, - - 225
Pribram, A. F., The Secret Treaties
of Austria-Hungary, 1879-1914, 331
Printers to the University of
Glasgow, - - 340
Queen's University, Kingston,
Canada, Bulletin of, 71
Rait, R. S., and Dicey, A. V.,
Thoughts on the Union between
England and Scotland, - - 317
Rait, Professor R. S., reviews by, 50, 138
Ramus, A Scottish Pupil of, note
on, by D. Baird Smith, - 158
Rapports fails aux Conferences de
la Haye de 1899 et 1907, 332
Reddaway, W. F., An Introduc-
tion to the Study of Russian
History, _- 333
Rees, J. F., A Social and Industrial
History of England, 329
Reviews of Books, 50, 138, 234, 317
Index
345
Revue Historique, - 72,356, 337
Rhodes, J. F., History of the Civil
War, 1861-1865,- - 63
Robieson, W. D., reviews by, 58, 146
Roland, The Song of, done into
English by C. Scott Mon-
crieff, - - 243
Roman Essays and Interpretations,
by W. Warde Fowler, - - 320
Roughead, W., The Riddle of the
Ruthvens, - 1 49
Ruthvens, The Riddle of the, by W.
Roughead, - - 149
Samson, G. G., Causes and Conse-
quences, - 151
Sandys, Sir J. E., Latin Epigraphy, 59
Sarolea, Charles, Europe and the
League of 'Nations, - - 238
Scotland, Proceedings of the Society
of Antiquaries of, - 62, 330
Scots Pearls, by Maria Steuart, - 287
Scots Peerage, note on by Robert
Stewart, - - 339
Scott, Rev. A. B., The Pictish
Nation, - 57
Scott, J. Brown, Judicial Settlement
of Controversies between States of
the American Union - 148, 332
Scott, Sir Walter, by Prof. W. P.
Ker, - - 246
Scottish Church from the Earliest
Times, The Story of the, by
Ninian Hill, - 144
Scottish History Society, Miscellany
of the,- - 234
Scottish History, Surveys of, by P.
Hume Brown, - - 237
Scottish Middle Templars 1647-
1869, by C. E. A. Bed well,
100 ; note on, - -251
Seigneur Davie, note on by
A. Francis Steuart, - 161
Seton, Sir Bruce, The Distaff
Side : A Study in Matrimonial
Adventure in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, 272 ; review
by, - - 234
Seton, W. W., and R. W. Cham-
bers, Bellenden's Translation
of the History of Hector Boece, - 5
Sheercloth'd, note on by W.
Craigie, - - 248
Side Light on the 1715, A, by
Ninian Hill, - 225
Smith, David Baird, A Scottish
Pupil of Ramus, 158 ; Le Test-
ament du Gentil Cossoys, 1 90 ;
reviews by 154, 337
Somersetshire, Archaeological and
Natural History Society Pro-
ceedings, - 71
Social Life in Scotland in the
Sixteenth Century, by Sir J.
Balfour Paul, - - 296
Source Books of History, - - 332
Spanish Story of the Armada, The,
by W. P. Ker, - - 165
Sproxton, C., Palmerston and the
Hungarian Revolution, - - 150
Steuart, A. Francis, The Last
Days of Clementina Walkin-
shaw, 259; Seigneur Davie,
161 ; reviews by, 6 1 , 149, 326,
327 ; note by, - - 249
Steuart, Maria, Scots Pearls, - 287
Stevenson, George, Pieces from
the Makculloch and Gray MSS., 145
Stevenson, J. H., notes by, 157, 158
Stewart, Captain James, of
H.M.S. Royal 4nne Galley, - 225
Stewart, Robert, Scots Peerage, - 339
Stirling Merchant Gild, The, by
D. B. Morris, - - 65
Story, R. M., American Municipal
Executive, - 67
Testament du Gentil Cossoys,
Le, by David Baird Smith, - 190
Thornly, Isobel D., England
under the Torkists, - 3 3 2
Tout, Professor T. F., reviews
by, - 52, 68
Tudor Nobleman, The Household of
a, by P. van B. Jones, - - 68
Ulster, Elizabethan, by Lord E.
Hamilton, - 61
Union between England and Scot-
land, by A. V. Dicey and R. S.
Rait, - - 317
Index
Walkinshaw, The Last Days of Diplomatic Relations between
Clementina, - 249 England and Russia, 333
Watt, Lauchlan M., Douglas's Wilson, Rev. Canon, Constitu-
Aeneid, - 326
Warwick, Rev. John, Scottish
Middle Templars, - 251
tional Growth of Carlisle
Cathedral, -
Wenier, A., Commercial and
¥ ale Review ', -
199
72
GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.
THE SCOTTISH
HISTORICAL REVIEW
PUBLISHED BY
MACLEHOSE, JACKSON & CO., GLASGOW
flublishrrs to the Bnibrrsihj
MACMILLAN AND CO. LTD. LONDON
New York • • The Macmillan Co.
Toronto • • • The Macmillan Co. of Canada
London ... Simpkin, Hamilton and Co.
Cambridge • • Bowes and Bowes
Edinburgh • - Douglas and Faults
Sydney - - - Angus and Robertson
THE
SCOTTISH
HISTOBJCAL
Volume Eighteenth
GLASGOW
MACLEHOSE, JACKSON AND CO.
PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY
1921
Contents
PAGE
Tour of Mary, Queen of Scots, through South-western
Scotland. By Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart. r
The Economic Position of Scotland in 1760. By John M.
Dickie 14
The Dalkeith Portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots. By
Maria Steuart. With Illustration - 32
' Teste Meipso ' and the Parochial Law of Tithes. By
David Baird Smith 36
The Arbuthnots of Kincardineshire and Aberdeenshire. By
Sir James Balfour Paul - - 44
The Passages of St. Malachy through Scotland. By the
Rev. Canon Wilson - 69
Queen Mary's Jewels. By J. Duncan Mackie - 83
Early Orkney Rentals in Scots Money or in Sterling. By
J. Storer Clouston 99
James Boswell as Essayist. By J. T. T. Brown, LL.D. - 102
On ' Parliament ' and ' General Council.' By Professor
R. K. Hannay - -157
The Stuart Papers at Windsor Castle. By Walter Seton - 171
Scottish Biblical Inscriptions in France. By W. A. Craigie 181
Ninian Campbell of Kilmacolm, Professor of Eloquence at
Saumur, Minister of Kilmacolm and of Rosneath. By
David Murray, LL.D. - - 183
imian Ware and the Chronology of the Roman Occupa-
tion. By S. N. Miller - - 199
vi Contents
I'ACK
Mr. Robert Kirk's Note-Book. By David Baird Smith,
LL.D. 237
The Appin Murder, 1752 : Cost of the Execution. By
W. B. Blaikie, LL.D. 249
A Seventeenth Century Deal in Corn. By Sir Bruce
Seton, Bt. of Abercorn - - 253
The Earl of Arran and Queen Mary. By Professor R. K.
Hannay - 258
An Old Scottish Handicraft Industry in the North of
Scotland. By Isabel F. Grant 277
Reviews of Books 49, 117, 206, 290
Communications and Notes —
Alexander, son of Donald, Earl of Mar. By W. R.
Cunningham - 64
A Curious Word for Great Nephew. By the Duke of Argyll 65
A Note on Roman Law in Scotland. By David Baird Smith 66
A Curious Word for Great Nephew. By A. W. Johnston,
William Angus and the Duke of Argyll - 152
The Dalkeith Portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots. By Walter
Seton - 152, 235
MacBeth or MacHeth. By the Rev. John Macbeth - 153
MacBeth, MacHeth. By A. W. Johnston - 155, 236
Queen Margaret Tudor. By A. Francis Steuart - 155
Dundrennan Abbey - 156
A Corpus of Runic Inscriptions - - 156
Early Orkney Rentals in Scots Money or in Sterling. By
A. W. Johnston - - 229
Early Eighteenth Century Indenture of Apprenticeship in the
Dyeing Trade at Haddington. By John Edwards - 231
The Enticement of Scottish Artificers to Russia and Denmark
in 1784 and 1786. By E. Alfred Jones 233
The Dalkeith Portrait of Mary Queen of Scots. By Maria
Steuart - _____ 234
Contents
Vll
Mandate to the Burgh Commissaries of Kinghorn for Parlia-
ment, 1475. By A. B. Calderwood and Professor R. K.
Han nay
Local War Records -
St. Malachy in Scotland. By Sir Herbert Maxwell
Archbishop Spottiswoode's History By D. Hay Fleming
Scottish Church History Society -
Scottish Biblical Inscriptions in France. By A. W. Johnston
235
319
3*9
320
320
320
Illustrations
PAGE
Mary, Queen of Scots, Queen Consort of France. The Dalkeith
Portrait. In the possession of His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch
and Queensberry, K.T. - 32
The Great Hall in Medieval England - 212
A Windmill in Essex, to illustrate early mechanism of windmills - 213
A Judicial Combat in the Thirteenth Century - - 214
Billon Penny, James III. - - 300
Copper Farthing, James III. - - 300
Crossraguel Copper Penny, first variety - 300
Crossraguel Copper Penny, second variety - - 300
Crossraguel Copper Farthing, third variety - - 300
Contributors to this Volume
William Angus
Duke of Argyll
C. T. Atkinson
W. B. Blaikie
Sheriff P. J. Blair
Professor G. Baldwin Brown
J. T. T. Brown
A. B. Calderwood
Prof. A. H. Charteris
James M. Clark
J. Storer Clouston
W. A. Craigie
W. R. Cunningham
A. O. Curie
James Curie
John M. Dickie
T. F. Donald
John Edwards
Prof. J. R. Elder
D. Hay Fleming
A. W. Gomme
Isabel F. Grant
James Gray
Prof. R. K. Hannay
Prof. C. S. S. Higham
A. W. Johnston
E. Alfred Jones
Robert Lamond
Andrew Law
Rev. John MacBeth
Prof. W. S. McKechnie
J. Duncan Mackie
Hamish A. MacLehose
James MacLehose
Andrew Marshall
W. L. Mathieson
Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart.
S. N. Miller
Sheriff Scott Moncrieff
David Murray
George Neilson
Sir J. Balfour Paul
Sheriff S. M. Penney
Prof. F. M. Powicke
xii Contributors
W. L. Renwick A. Francis Steuart
Prof. W. R. Scott Maria Steuart
Sir Bruce Seton. Bart. Sheriff A. S. D. Thomson
Walter Seton A. M. Williams
David Baird Smith J. W. Williams
J. H. Stevenson Rev. Canon Wilson
The
Scottish Historical Review
VOL. XVIII., No. 69 OCTOBER, 1920
Tour of Mary, Queen of Scots, through South-
western Scotland
ON page 155 of the Rev. C. H. Dick's Highways and Byways
of Galloway and Carrick l there is a masterly pencil sketch
by the late Mr. Hugh Thomson of the quaint bridge which,
abutting on the old woollen mill of Cumloden, flings itself
across the rocky gorge through which the Penkill Burn hurries
towards its junction with the Cree.2 Both mill and bridge are
of unknown antiquity, certainly far older than the pretty and
prosperous town of Newton Stewart, which until far on in the
eighteenth century was no more than a humble ' clachan,' taking
the name of Fordhouse from the Black Ford of Cree. The said
ford was superseded by a bridge built in 1745, which, having
been washed away by a flood in 1810, was replaced in 1813 by
the handsome granite bridge of five arches now linking the
County of Wigtown with the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. The
ford, now disused, impressed itself vividly on the memory of
Daniel Defoe, who has the following in his description of
Whithorn :
' Proceeding from Lower Galloway hither we had like to have
been driven down the Stream of a River, though a Countryman
went before for our Guide ; for the Water swelled upon us as
1Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1916.
2 Penkill, formerly Polkill (Poolkill B. in Font's map of early seventeenth century),
being the Gaelic pol cllle, chapel stream, flowing under the hill whereon stands
Minigaff parish church.
S.H.R. VOL. XVIII. A
2 Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart.
we passed, and the Stream was very strong, so that we were
obliged to turn our Horses Heads to the Current, and sloping
over, edged near the Shore by degrees ; whereas, if our Horses
had stood directly across the Stream, they could not have kept
their Feet.' *
In his description of Newton Stewart and the village of
Minigaff, occupying opposite banks of the Cree, Mr. Dick makes
no reference to the name by which the old bridge at Cumloden
Mill is popularly known, viz. Queen Mary's Bridge, a title
which has received the official sanction of the Ordnance Survey.
It may well be that he felt sceptical about Mary Queen of Scots
ever having ridden over that narrow arch and declined to commit
himself either for or against the tradition, especially as it had
become associated with the Queen's flight from the stricken
field of Langside in 1568, whereas it is well known that she
entered Galloway on that unhappy occasion by way of Dumfries,
six-and-thirty miles as the crow flies to the east of Cumloden.
I myself, though I have known and spoken of Queen Mary's
Bridge since my boyhood, long ago came to regard the name as
the mythical offspring of that fond credulity which ever inclines
to link ancient and conspicuous objects with historical persons.2
I owe it to my friends, Lieut. A. M'Cormick, Town Clerk of
Newton Stewart, and Mr. William Macmath of Edinburgh,
that my attention has been called to the Roll of Expenses drawn
up by Queen Mary's equerry during her progress in 1563,
giving a complete itinerary of the tour through Galloway. The
document is in excellent preservation ; but, owing to numerous
contractions, transcription was more difficult than is usually the
case even in dealing with manuscript of the sixteenth century,
the hand-writing of that period being more crabbed than that
of any other. Moreover, the French scribe made wild shots
1A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, 3 vols., 1724-5-6. Defoe
was in Scotland from 1706 to 1708. It is doubtful whether he actually visited
all the places described in this work; but his description of Galloway bears all the
character of personal observation.
2 A quaint example of this tendency occurs in connection with Tibbers Castle,
a ruined keep standing in the park surrounding Drumlanrig. It is stated in the
Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland that the tower ' is supposed to have been built by
the Romans and named in honour of Tiberius Caesar ! ' Not until I visited the
place many years ago did the true origin of the name occur to me. Within the
tower is a well so deep and of such steady temperature that the gardener at
Drumlanrig uses it, I was informed, for testing and regulating his thermometers.
1 Tibbers ' is the form which the Gaelic tiobar, a well, has acquired among an
English-speaking people.
Tour of Mary, Queen of Scots 3
at the names of places in attempting to render them phonetically,
and in some cases it has required acquaintance with the topo-
graphy of the district to identify them. I have to thank Mr.
William Angus of the General Register House and Miss Norman
for elucidating the sense of many words which had baffled the
transcriber of whose services I had availed myself.
Examination of the Queen's itinerary in 1563 strengthens the
tradition connecting her name with the old bridge at Cumloden.
She was travelling, not as a fugitive as when she escaped to
Galloway from Langside five years later, but in considerable
state. The passage of herself and suite, with eighteen horses
and six baggage mules, would in itself have sufficed to command
admiration from the populace ; but when, as was doubtless the
case, her personal retinue was swelled by the escort of the barons
and lairds through whose lands she passed, each with his armed
following, the spectacle was one to create a lasting impression,
greatly enhanced in effect by the beauty and grace of the young
Sovereign.
On Friday, I3th August, the Queen left Clary, three miles
south of Newton Stewart, on her way to Kenmure. If, as is
probable, she forded the Cree just above the confluence of the
Penkill, she and her train must have ridden over the bridge at
Cumloden and taken the direct road (at that time only a pack-
horse track) through the pass of Talnotry, across the Dee at
Clatterinshaws and so down by the Knocknarling glen to New
Galloway. As the glittering cavalcade filed over the narrow
arch at Cumloden Mill, the spectacle may well have impressed
the spectators in such manner as to cause them to associate the
Queen's name with the bridge, and to pass the name down to
their children.
So much for the authenticity of Queen Mary's Bridge. Of
much greater interest to historians of the district is the entry
recording how on Tuesday, loth August, the Queen, after
dining at Glenluce (probably about midday), supped and slept
at a place which the French equerry has written ' Coustorne.'
It may seem at first sight a strained interpretation to read this
as ' Whithorn ' ; but for the following reasons I have no doubt
whatever that the reference is to that town.
(1) Whithorn lies twenty miles south-east of Glenluce an
easy ride for a good horsewoman like Queen Mary.
(2) There is no other place within a day's journey of Glenluce
of which the name bears the slightest resemblance to Coustorne.
4 Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart.
(3) In the sixteenth century the name was usually written
Quhiterne, with the usual Scottish use of quh for wh \ in the
local dialect it is pronounced at this day Hwuttren.
The following entry in the Lord Treasurer's Accounts for the
very year in which Queen Mary visited Galloway shows how the
name was written officially:
'Item, the xvi day of Februar [1562-3] to Thomas Mac-
mabraine, messinger, passand of Edinbrught with lettres of
proclamatioun to the mercat croces of Kirkcubbrycht, Wigtoun
and Quhithorne, charging all and sindrie our Souerane Ladeis
liegis that nane of thame eit flesche in Lentrene, and witht ane
command in the samin to all ostlairis, cuikis, flescheouris,
tabernais or any uther personis, that thai sell nor prepair na
maner of flesche to be sauld, under the pane of confiscatioun
of all thair movable gudis . . . . . xii s.'
The French equerry may very easily have misread the first
syllable of ' Quhithorne ' in settling a tavern or other bill.
Residents in Whithorn and its neighbourhood, myself in-
cluded, have assumed (if they ever gave a thought to the matter)
that the last monarch to visit Whithorn was James IV. in 1512,
the year before his death at Flodden. That monarch, in his
frequent pilgrimages to ease his burdened conscience at the
shrine of S. Ninian at Whithorn, usually travelled by the route
followed by Queen Mary on the occasion under notice, namely,
by Ayr, Girvan and Glenluce. It would have been strange if
his grand-daughter, a devout Roman Catholic, when traveling
by this route had refrained from visiting a place of such extra-
ordinary sanctity, when within a few miles of it. The circum-
stances of the time, the old religion having been proscribed,
would surely tend to render her specially scrupulous in devotion.
It may be noted that pilgrimages to the shrines of saints were not
prohibited by law till 1568. Probably no town in Scotland
suffered so much as Whithorn in consequence of this legislation,
seeing that the little burgh had theretofore attracted more
pilgrims than any other place in the country.
Subjoined is given the Roll of Expenses during the month of
August, with such notes on persons and places as may serve to
illustrate the state of the country and society. The only liberties
taken with the text consist of the extension of contractions,
occasional insertion of punctuation for the sake of clearness, and
changing u in the MS. to v, as in " avene " for " auene."
Tour of Mary, Queen of Scots 5
ROOLE ET DESPENSE de lescuHe de la Royne tant de 1'ordinaire
gaiges d'officiers l que aultre despence extraordinairement
faicte in icelle escuirie durant le mois d'aoust mil cinq cent
soixante trois.
PREMIEREMENT.
Dimanche premier jour dudict mois d'aoust endit an mil v° Ixiij
la Royne tout le jour chez le conte deglinton.
Avene pour les hacquenees et mulletz estans lescuirie . Neant
Faille et foin pour lesdits hacquenees et mulletz . Neant
S[omme] de ce jour . . . . Neant
The Queen's host on this day was Hugh, 3rd Earl of Eglinton
[c. 1530-1585]. He was one of the nobles sent in 1561 to escort
Queen Mary from France to Leith. The vessel in which he was a
passenger was captured by the English on the return voyage, but, the
Queen having escaped the squadron sent out to intercept her, Eglinton
and those taken prisoners with him was released soon afterwards. He
was one of Queen Mary's foremost adherents.
Lundy iime jour dudict mois la Royne disner a Eglinton, soupper
et coucher a S* Jehan d'era [Ayr]
Pour quatorze pecques et demye davene
pour la souppee de xviij hacquenees et
vi mulletz a Raison de vj s viij d la
pecque . . . . . . iiij / xvi s viij d
Pour paille pour lesdicts hacquenees et vi
mullettz araison de xiiij d pour demye
journee pour chacun .... xxviij s
S[omme] davene en argent . . , iiij / xvi s viij d
S[omme] de paille .... xxviij s.
The Church and Monastery of St. John the Baptist at Ayr was the
meeting place of Robert the Bruce's Parliament on 25th April, 1315,
when the succession to the throne was settled on his brother Edward.
The buildings were enclosed in the fortification erected by Cromwell
in 1652, when the ancient church was converted into an armoury
and guard room. I do not know whether a lay commendator had
been appointed before Queen Mary's visit ; but at all events the
equerry had to pay for the corn and straw for horses and mules,
whereas at Glenluce Abbey a few days later no charge was made.
Mardi iij jour dudict mois, la Royne a St Jehan d'era, pour
une bolle trois frelletz 2 deux pecques avene pour xviij
1The list of officers and their salaries, not being relevant to the expenses of the
tour, has not been reproduced here.
2 Firlots. A firlot is the fourth part of a boll.
6 Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart.
hacquenees et vi mullettz au pris de vi s viij d la pec-
que x/z
Pour paille pour xviij hacquenees et yj
mulletz a ii s iiij d par jour . . Ivj s
S[omme] davene en argent . .x/z
S[omme] de paille . . Ivi s
Mercredy iiij006 jour dudict mois, la Royne disner a St Jehan
d'era, coucher et soupper a Duneura [Dunure] chez le
Conte de Casel.
Pour une bolle ung frellet demye pecque
avoine pour la disnee de xviij hacque-
nees estans a la paile, autres hacquenees
estans a 1'herbe et yj mulletz araison
de vi s viij d la pecque . . cvj s viij d
Pour paille pour lesdits xviij hacquenees
et yj mullettz araison de xiiij d pour
ladit demye journee .... xxviij s
Sfomme] davene en argent . . cvj s viij d
S[omme] de paille .... xxviij s
Gilbert, 4th Earl of Cassillis, who received the Queen at his
principal house at Dunure, cannot have been more than three-or-four-
and-twenty at this time. He was a staunch adherent of Queen
Mary, fought for her at Langside, and died in 1576 from injuries
caused by his horse falling with him.
Jeudy v™ jour dudict mois, La Royne tout le jour a Duneura
chez le conte de Casel
Avene despencee cedit jour pour les hacquenees
et mulletz ....... Neant
Paille pour lesdits hacquenees et mulletz . . Neant
S[omme] de ce jour.
Vendredi vjme jour dudict mois, la Royne chez Mons. le Conte
de Casel a Duneura
Avene ........ Neant
Paille Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
Samedy vij11* jour dudit mois, La Royne disner a Duneure,
soupper et coucher a Ermelan. [Ardmillan.]
Avene et paille ....... Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
Ardmillan was in possession of Thomas Kennedy, a cadet of the
Earl of Cassillis's powerful clan.
Tour of Mary, Queen of Scots 7
Dymanche viijme jour dudit mois, La Royne disner a Ermelan
et scupper a Arstinchel. [Ardstinchar.]
Avene pour les hacquenees et mulletz . . . Neant
Faille pour les hacquenees et mulletz . . . Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
Ardstinchar whereof the picturesque ruins stand on a steep bluff on
the right bank of the Stinchar at Ballantrae was a stronghold of
Kennedy of Bargany. The acquisition of the land by Sir Hugh
Kennedy in the fifteenth century and the building of the castle is told
so quaintly by the anonymous author of The Historie of the Kennedyis
that I am tempted to quote it here :
' The Hous of Balgany cam to thair preferment be the valour of
ane secund broder, quha wes first putt to haue bein ane Freir ; bot
his curage [being] not agreabill to sa base an office, [he] lost the
same and passitt with the Laird of Blaquhane [Blairquhan] to France
to Chairllis the VIL, in the yeir of our Lord 1431. He was callit
Freir Hew, and was for his valour so beluiffit of the King of France
that he remaynit with him mony yeiris thairefter, and went with him
to the Holy Land. And at his returning he resavitt word that his
broder the Laird of Bargany was deid. Quhairupone he tuik leiff of
the King of France, and gott, in recompense of his seruice mony gritt
rewairdis of gold and mony ; and abuiff all, he gaiff him leiff to weir
airmiss [arms] quarterly in his airmis, to wit, flour-de-lyse, quhilk
that hous weiris to this day.
' He com to Scotland and bocht the ten pund land of Arstensar,
and buildit the hous thairof, and conqueist mony ma landis be
the benefeitt off the stipend of the King of France. This Freir Hewis
oy [grandson] wes callit ' Com with the penny,' quha conquesit
[acquired] the grittest pairt off all the lewing, quhilk now is ane gritt
rent.'
Lundy ixme jour dudit mois dudit an La Royne disner a Ar-
stinchel, scupper et coucher a Glainleux. [Glenluce.]
Avene despencee cedit jour pour les hacquenees et
mulletz ........ Neant
Faille pour les dits hacquenees et mullettz . . Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
Queen Mary lay at the Abbey and Monastery of Glenluce, not in
the village of that name. Thomas Hay of the family of Park had
been appointed Abbot by Pope Pius IV., but was refused entry by
John Gordon, Lord of Lochinvar, who occupied the buildings by force,
after expelling the monks. Gordon was acting in virtue of a charter
of feu-farm granted him by a former abbot on 3 1st January, 1557-8.
The dispute was submitted by agreement of parties to the arbitration
of Lord James Stewart (afterwards Regent Moray), who decided in
favour of Abbot Thomas, reserving to Gordon the old by-run duties
8 Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart.
of the Abbey. In the following year, however, 1561, Gilbert, 4th
Earl of Cassillis, was appointed Heritable Baillie of the Abbey, and no
doubt he was Queen Mary's host and discharged the equerry's ex-
penses, although Abbot Thomas and ten monks were still in residence.
Mardy xme jour dudict mois, la Royne disner a Glainleux,
scupper et coucher a Coustorne. [Whithorn.]
Avene despencee comme dessus .... Neant
Faille Neant
S[omme] decejour ..... Neant
The Rev. John Anderson, formerly curator of the Historical
Department of the General Register House, Edinburgh, Mr. William
Angus, now in that Department, Dr. Hay Fleming and myself, all
concur in the conclusion that c Coustorne ' is the equerry's attempt at
Whithorn or Quhithorn ; that indeed no other place can have been
intended. The Prior of Whithorn at this time was Malcolm
Fleming, second son of the 2nd Earl of Wigtown. He would
naturally have been the Queen's host on the occasion of her visit ;
but it is doubtful whether he was present, because on I9th May
preceding he had been tried, together with forty-six other clergy
and laymen, before the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, and,
having been convicted on his own confession of celebrating mass at
Congleton in the month of April, was sentenced to ward in Dunbarton
Castle (Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. i. part i. p. 428). He was
afterwards removed from the priorate, and died in 1 569.
Mercredy xime jour dudit mois, la Royne disner a Coustorne,
scupper et coucher a Clery chez mons. de Garliz.
Avene despence cedit jour pour les hacquenees et
mullettz ....... Neant
Faille despence comme dessus .... Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
Clery, now written Clary, was the residence attached to the see of
Candida Casa — the Bishop of Whithorn's palace, in short — whence
the name, from the Gaelic clerech, clergy. There was at this time no
Bishop of Galloway. Alexander Gordon, a younger son of John,
Master of Huntly, by Jane Drummond, natural daughter of James IV.,
had been appointed titular Archbishop of Athens in 1551, Bishop of
the Isles in 1553, and Bishop of Galloway in 1558. But in 1560 he
renounced the Church of Rome, and joined the Reformed Church,
being hailed by Knox as the only consecrated prelate who did so.
Gordon hoped, no doubt, that he would continue to administer the
diocese of Galloway ; but on 3oth June, 1 562, the General Assembly re-
fused to recognise him as superintendent of that see until " the Kirks
of Galloway craved him." Thereafter he was recognised only as the
Assembly's Commissioner for Galloway. In 1568 the Assembly in-
hibited him from "any function in the Kirk." He died at Clary in 1575.
Tour of Mary, Queen of Scots 9
Alexander Stewart, younger of Garlics, who received Queen Mary
at Clary, direct ancestor of the Earls of Galloway, was a leading
adherent of the Reformation. Nevertheless, he seems to have won
Queen Mary's favour, for on the occasion of her marriage to Darnley
in 1565, Stewart received knighthood from the royal bridegroom, who
presented him with a silver comfit box (still in possession of the
present Earl of Galloway) engraved with the words — * The Gift of
Henry, Lord Darnley, to his cousin Sir Alexander Stewart of Garleis.'
Jeudi xiime jour dudit mois, la Royne tout le jour a Clery chez
mons. de Garliz.
Avene despencee cedit jour pour lesdits hacquenees
et mulletz ...... Neant
Faille pour lesdits hacquenees et mulletz . . Neant
S[omme] de ce jour . . . - . . Neant
F*»</ra#xiijmejour dudit mois, la Royne disner a Clery, soupper
et coucher a Quinemur chez Mons. de Locquenar.
Avene despencee cedit jour pour les hacquenees et
mullettz estans en lescurier .... Neant
Faille pour lesdits hacquenees et mulletz . . Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
In the original MS. the name Quinemur presents a puzzling
appearance owing to the first syllable being written at the end of one
line and the second at the beginning of the next. It represents
Kenmure, the residence of Sir John Gordon of Lochinvar, Justiciar of
Eastern Galloway and grandfather of the ist Viscount Kenmure.
Samedy xiiij™6 jour dudit mois, la Royne tout le jour a Quineur
chez Mons. de Locquenar.
Avene despencee cedit jour pour les mulletz et
hacquenees ....... Neant
Faille pour les hacquenees et mulletz . . . Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
Dimanche xvme jour dudit mois, la Royne disner a Quinemur,
soupper et coucher a Ste Mere esle chez le tresorier.
The Prior of St. Mary's Isle was Robert Richardson, his appoint-
ment being dated 3ist March, 1559. As Prior he was entitled to sit
as a lord of Parliament, and in March 1560-1 he was appointed Lord
High Treasurer of Scotland. He acquired great wealth, to which his
two natural sons succeeded. A few months after he had the honour
of entertaining his Sovereign at St. Mary's Isle, Randolph, writing to
Cecil on 3 1st December, has the following :
'For newes yt maye please your Honor to knowe that the Lord
Treasurer of Scotlande, for gettinge of a woman with chylde, muste,
upon Sondaye next, do open penance before the whole Congregation,
and Mr Knox mayke the sermonde. Thys my Lorde of Murraye
io Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart.
wylled me to wryte unto your Honour for a note of our griate
severitie in punyshinge of offenders.'
Lundy xvimejour dudit mois, La Royne disner chez levesque de
Galloua, scupper et coucher a Ste Mere esle chez le tresorier.
Avene pour les hacquenees et mulletz . . . Neant
Faille pour les hacquenees et mulletz . . . Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
Mardy xvijme jour dudit mois, La Royne tout le jour a Ste
Mery esle chez le tresorier.
Avene pour les hacquenees et mulletz . . . Neant
Faille pour les hacquenees et mulletz . . . Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
Merer edy xviij"16 jour dudit mois, La Royne disner a Ste Mere
esle, soupper et coucher a Domfric chez Maistre Mazouel.
Avene pour les hacquenees et mulletz . . . Neant
Faille pour les dites hacquenees .... Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
The person here referred to as ' Maistre Mazouel ' was Sir John
Maxwell of Terregles, second son of Robert, 5th Lord Maxwell,
and afterwards 4th Lord Herries. * He was tutor to two of his
nephews who, as minors, successively inherited the estates and titles
of the house of Maxwell, and being to them, and also for a time to
his own brother, presumptive heir, he was often designated Master of
Maxwell ' (Eraser's Book of Carlaverock, i. 497). At the time of
Queen Mary's visit he was Warden of the West Marches. Five
years later, as Lord Herries, he commanded the royal cavalry at the
battle of Langside, and with the Lords Fleming and Livingstone,
escorted the Oueen from the field. They rode all night, arriving at
Sanquhar in the early morning, whence they went on to Lord
Herries's house of Terregles.
Jeudy xixme jour dudit mois, La Royne tout le jour a Domfric
chez Maistre Mazouel.
Avene pour les mulletz et hacquenees despence ce jour Neant
Faille pour les dites hacquenees .... Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
Vendredy xxme jour dudit mois, La Royne tout le jour a Domfric
chez Maistre Mazouel.
Avene pour les hacquenees et mulletz . . . Neant
Pour paille pour les dites hacquenees et mulletz . Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
Samedy xxi™6 jour dudit mois, La Royne disner a Domfric
et soupper a Domblanric [Drumlanrig], Cedit jour
Tour of Mary, Queen of Scots 1 1
Maistre Mazouel a faict present dune hacquenee a la
Royne.
Avene despencee cedit jour pour les hacquenees et
mulletz ........ Neant
Faille pour lesdites hacquenees et mulletz . . Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
Sir James Douglas of Drumlanrig was a prominent figure in the
politics and polemics of the sixteenth century. Born in 1498, he
survived till 1578. He was a supporter of the Reformation and was
warded in 1566 as an accomplice in the murder of Riccio. He was
the great-grandfather of the ist Earl of Queensberry.
Dymanche xxijme jour dudit mois, La Royne tout le jour a
Domblanric.
Avene despencee cedit jour pour les hacquenees et
mulletz ........ Neant
Faille pour les dits hacquenees et mulletz . . Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
Lundy xxiijme jour dudit mois, la Royne disner a Domblanric,
soupper et coucher a Crafurgeon [Crawfordjohn],
Une bolle, ung frellet, une pecque avene
pour la souppee de xix hacquenees vj
mulletz et xii hacquenees estans a Iherbe
au pris de vj s viij d . . . . ciij s iiij d
Pour paille pour xix hacquenees et vi
mulletz a raison de ij s iiij d par jour . xxix s ij d
The barony of Crawfordjohn was acquired in 1530 by Sir James
Hamilton of Finnart — the ' Bastard of Arran ; but it reverted to the
Crown on his arraignment and execution for alleged treason in 1540.
It is believed that the old castle of Crawfordjohn was no longer in
existence at the time of Queen Mary's visit, having been used as a
quarry to supply material for building Boghouse, a mansion erected by
James V. for one of his many mistresses, a daughter of the Captain of
Crawford (Origines Parochiales, i. 163). As this lady afterwards married
the laird of Cambusnethan, Boghouse probably stood ready to receive
Queen Mary on her travels. At all events she did not have the expenses
of her horses and mules defrayed at Crawfordjohn, as it was the privi-
lege of those of her subjects whom she honoured by a visit.
Mardy xxiiijme jour dudit mois, La Royne disner a Crafurjeon,
soupper et coucher a Coldily.
Pour une bolle ung frellet une pecque pour
xix hacquenees, vi mulletz et xii autres
hacquenees estans a Iherbe au pris de
vj s viij d , . . . . . ciij s iiij d
i2 Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart.
Pour paille pour les dits xix hacquenees et
vj mulletz a Raison de ij s iiij d pour
demye journee de chacun . . . xxixjii</
Mercredy xxvme jour du dit mois, La Royne a Codily [Cowthally]
chez monsieur Semeruel.
Avene despencee ce jour pour les mulletz et hacqueneesl Neant
Paille pour lesdits mulletz et hacquenees . . Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
Cowthally, now a sheer ruin standing near a dreary moss about a
mile and a half north-west of Carnwath village, was the chief
residence of the powerful house of Somerville. The owner thereof
in 1563 was James, 5th Lord Somerville, who afterwards led 300 of
his men to join Queen Mary's forces at Langside. It is said that so
princely was the establishment maintained at Cowthally that when
James VI. was on a visit there he suggested that the name should be
changed to * Cow-daily,' forasmuch as a cow and ten sheep were
slaughtered daily to supply the household.
Jeudy xxvj1110 jour dudit mois, La Royne disner a Codily, scupper
et coucher chez monsieur Descrelin [Skirling]
Avene despencee ce jour ..... Neant
Paille aussi despencee cedit jour .... Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
Sir William Cockburn of Skirling was a staunch adherent of
Queen Mary, who appointed him keeper of Edinburgh Castle in
1567. Skirling Castle, about 2| miles east north-east of Biggar, was
demolished in 1568 by order of the Regent Moray.
Vendredy xxvij jour du dit mois, la Royne disner a Escrelin,
soupper et coucher a Pibles.
Pour une bolle, ung frellet, deux pecques
avene pour la souppee de xxxi hacque-
nees, tant a la paille q'a 1' herbe,1 vj
mulletz au pris de vj s viij d la pecque . ciij s iiij d
Pour paille pour les dits mulletz [et] xix
hacquenees, a raison de ij s iiij d par
jour pour chacun .... xxix s ij d
S[omme] d'avene .... ciij s iiij d
S[omme] de paille .... xxix s ij d
The Queen probably lodged at her own charges in the royal castle of
Peebles, the last crowned head that was to lie there being Henry
Darnley, whom, according to Buchanan, she sent there in 1565 in
order to keep him out of the way (History, xvij, cap. li.)
1 ' Both those in stalls and those at grass.' The Queen's train had been in-
creased ; the number of horses, originally 16, had risen to 31.
Tour of Mary, Queen of Scots 13
Samedy xxviijme jour dudit mois, la Royne disner a Pibles,
scupper et coucher a Bortic [Borthwick].
Pour trois frelletz trois pecques et demye
avene pour la disnee de xix hacquenees
et vi mulletz au pris de vj s viij d . . ciij s iiij d
Pour paille pour lesdits xix hacquenees
et vj mulletz a raison de compte en la
journee preceddante . . . . xxixjij^
S[omme] davene en argent . . ciij s iiij d
S[omme] de paille .... xxix s ij d
This was not the first, nor yet the last, visit which Queen Mary
paid to Borthwick Castle. She was there as the guest of John, 6th
Lord Borthwick, on I2th January, 1662, and five years later, in June
1667, she and Bothwell were beleaguered there by the Lords Morton,
Mar, Home and Lindsay, escaping in disguise by night with Bothwell
to Dunbar.
Dymanche xxixme jour dudict mois, la Royne tout le jour chez
monsieur de Bortic.
Avene despencee cedit jour pour les mulletz et
hacquenees ....... Neant
Paille pour lesdicts mulletz et hacquenees despencee
cedit jour ....... Neant
S[omme] de ce jour ..... Neant
Mndy xxxme et penultime jour du diet mois, la Royne disner a
Bortic, scupper et coucher chez monsieur d'aousy [Dal-
housie].
Avene despence ce jour ..... Neant
Pour paille ....... Neant
S[omme] de ce jour .... Neant
George Ramsay, grand uncle of the ist Lord Ramsay of Dalhousie
(whose eldest son was created Earl of Dalhousie in 1633), received his
Sovereign in the fine castle of Dalhousie, aliter Dalwolsy, which
stands on a wooded bluff about two miles and a half south-west of
Dalkeith.
Mardy xxxime et dernier jour dudict mois daoust, La Royne
disner a daousy, scupper et coucher a Roscelin.
Avene despence cedit jour ..... Neant
Paille despence pour lesdicts hacquenees et mulletz Neant
The Sinclairs of Rosslyn were great builders, and Queen Mary's
host on this occasion, Sir William Sinclair, made important additions
to the castle which he had inherited (see M'Gibbon and Ross,
Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland^ iii. 366-376).
HERBERT MAXWELL.
The Economic Position of Scotland
in 1760
OUTSTANDING dates, marking the happening in time of
great events, play but a small part in economic history.
Change and movement in economic life are almost invariably
the cumulative result of causes deeply rooted in the past, the
effects of which, however, stretch far into the future. There
is an essential continuity in economic development which makes
it impossible to write down certain changes as commencing in
certain years, or to confine the extent of the operation of these
changes within definite historic periods. In the history of the
material development of Scotland, however, there is a sense in
which the year 1760 is of peculiar importance, as indicating a
real turning point in the economic fortunes of the country.
The economic position of Scotland in 1760 may be viewed
from two distinct standpoints. According as we adopt the one
or the other, the resulting picture is entirely different.
Thus from one point of view, it is possible to represent
Scotland as enjoying in 1760 a period of almost unexampled
economic prosperity. Contemporary writers make much of
' a capital era which has given new life to industry and enter-
prise of every sort.' l ' A spirit of industry and activity has been
raised and now pervades every order of men,' while * schemes
of trade and improvement are adopted, and put in practice, the
undertakers of which would in former times have been denomi-
nated madmen.' ' Every person is employed, not a beggar is
to be seen in the streets, the very children are busy.' 2 In point
of results, it was possible to show as general indications of
economic progress, a fivefold increase in the linen industry of
the country within a period of little over thirty years,3 andj[since
1 J. Ramsay, Scotland and Scotsmen in the l8th Century, ii. p. 213.
*J. Gibson, History of Glasgow, pp. 120, 115.
3 A. J. Warden, Linen Trade Ancient and Modern, p. 480.
The Economic Position of Scotland in 1760 15
the Union, a like expansion in shipping x the concomitant of a
trebled export trade.2
By way of explanation we must turn to the gradual removal
in the course of the eighteenth century of causes which had for
long hampered economic development. In this connection the
Union of 1707 occupies a position of first importance, as marking
the end of that dissension with England, which for centuries had
made wars the chief trade of the country,3 but which after the
political union of 1603, and especially towards the end of the
seventeenth century, had appeared in the guise of an acute form
of economic friction no less disturbing. In 1707 Scotland
became linked up with her natural economic ally in a real economic^
as distinct from a merely political union. At one stroke great
markets in England as well as in the West were opened to her.
To these she quickly responded, first with a growing trade and
commerce, later with an expanding manufacture.
But Scotland still lacked any real unity within herself. Little
progress was possible under conditions where the grace of
Highland chieftains was ' Lord ! Turn the world upside down
that Christians may make bread out of it.' 4 The failure of the
'Fifteen, however, and subsequently of the 'Forty-Five, while
in large measure due to a growing recognition of material
interests, in turn gave a new stimulus to economic life. The legis-
lative acts following on those risings, and the road building which
enabled the rapid movement of troops to keep order, destroyed
the last relics of feudalism, established the authority of law, and
so created security at home, in the absence of which sustained
economic effort was impossible.
There was also the removal of certain retarding influences of
religion. While the disturbing economic effects of religious
controversy accompanied by physical conflict had ceased in the
course of the seventeenth century, tendencies of a similar if less
obvious kind continued to operate in the eighteenth. A later
writer, perhaps not altogether understanding, professed amaze-
ment at a species of wildness inducing a people to prefer field
preaching to beneficial industry.5 If a day was to come when in
place of religion as the commerce of chief cities, commerce was
1G. Chalmers, Caledonia, ii. p. 883; iii. p. 53.
2G. Chalmers, Domestic Economy of Great Britain and Ireland, pp. 390, 392.
3 P. Lindsay, Interest of Scotland Considered, p. 82.
*T. Pennant, Tours, 1772, i. p. 400.
8 G. Chalmers, Caledonia, vi. p. 605.
1 6 The Economic Position
to be the chief religion,1 in the early part of the century that time
was not yet. A prepossession with affairs religious, with the
general merits or demerits of which on other grounds we are not
immediately concerned, did tend to check economic development
by giving birth to sectional disputes, and by representing
treasures on earth as matters of none account. The material
progress, however, which followed on the Union, to be greatly
accelerated after the 'Forty-Five, went far to tone down the
bitternesses of religious controversy, and to produce broader
conceptions and outlook in general. There was a striving to
darn and patch the rags and rents of ecclesiastical dispute.2 The
mid-eighteenth century saw the rise of the ' Moderates ' to a
position of predominance in the Church — a party aiming of set
purpose at taking an active part in the promotion of every scheme
of practical improvement, and accepting as a Christian duty the
advancement of the material wealth of the nation.3
In all these ways historic influences which had erected
obstacles in the path of economic progress tended to disappear.
The economic prosperity of Scotland in 1760 was the natural
outcome of the creation of conditions making a vigorous economic
life possible.
After all, however, this * happy state of North Britain ' had
little meaning except when viewed against the somewhat sombre
background of the past. Historically the economic poverty of
Scotland had become in large part a byword, almost a tradition,
' Mice, were they a commodity, Scotland might boast on't ! ' '
In this respect the early eighteenth century had seen no breaking
with the past. Here was a land ' the most barren of manu-
factures of any nation in these parts of Europe.'5 ' Money was
not the growth of the country.' 6 No one in the light of past
achievement could fail to appreciate the relative economic
prosperity of 1760. But from another point of view Scotland
was still poor. Even later years were to find her still in ' lan-
guishing ' 7 condition, her ' abject poverty and mean obscurity '
1 T. Pennant, Tours, 1772, i. p. 152. zlbid. p. 117.
3H. Craik, A Century of Scottish History, ii. p. 386.
4 P. Hume Brown, Early Travellers in Scotland, p. 201.
5 A short view of some probable effects of laying a duty on Scotch linen imported, 8 1 6 m.
(53) Brit. Mus.
7D. Loch, Essays on the trade, commerce, manufactures, and fisheries of Scotland, i.
p. iv.
of Scotland in 1760 17
comparing ill with ' the opulence and dignity of her sister
kingdom,'1 her revenue, according to one writer, burdensome
to the people, yet comparatively so very inconsiderable to that
of England, that had it been ruled out altogether the deficiency
would scarce have been observable.2 These were no doubt the
statements of individuals who had each his peculiar axe to grind,
still figures establish the general soundness of the conclusions.
It is difficult, of course, to compare the relative economic position
of England and Scotland at this time, on account of differences
in size and population, while comparisons with subsequent
expansion tend to be misleading, in view of the fact that the
whole content of economic life was later to be changed ; still
taking figures of shipping and exports 3 as at least rough general
indications of economic prosperity, and making all necessary
allowances, the poverty of Scotland in 1760 compared either with
the England of the day or with her own future development
stands out quite unmistakably.
It is of first importance to observe that the economic develop-
ment of Scotland from 1707 to 1760 took place in the main
along existing lines. What expansion there was, being essenti-
ally the result of the creation of conditions making a smooth
working of the existing economic organization possible, no
violent upheaval was necessarily involved in the nature of that
organization as such. There may have been at times indications
that an expanding economic life would devise new forms for itself,
but on the whole it is true to say that the striking contrast between
1707 and 1760 lay in the extent of the structure which had been
reared on the foundation, rather than in any change in the nature
of that foundation itself. This fact is of peculiar significance.
To interpret the nature of the economic organization of 1760
is to explain the causes of the relative economic poverty of
Scotland at that date.
In the scheme of economic life, as it then was, not only did
agriculture figure as the main industry, but it was in large part
* Ibid. p. Jx.
2 J. Knox, View of the British Empire, more especially Scotland, i. p. 107.
3 Tonnage of Scotland, 1760, 53,913 tons, G. Chalmers, Caledonia, v. p. 16 ;
Tonnage of" England, 1760, 573,978 tons, G. Chalmers, Estimate of the Comparative
Strength of Great Britain, p. 234; Tonnage of Scotland, 1820, 288,770 tons, G.
Chalmers, Caledonia, v. p. 16 ; Value of Scottish Exports, 1760, £1,086,205;
Value of English Exports, 1760, £14,694,970, G. Chalmers, Domestic Economy of
Great Britain and Ireland, pp. 166-7 ; Va^e of Scottish Exports, 1 820, £5,894,778,
G. Chalmers, Caledonia, v. p. 14.
1 8 The Economic Position
upon an agricultural basis that the whole economic organization
of the time might be said to turn. How far this was so may be
appreciated in different ways.
Thus in the case of the textile industries a close and intimate
relation existed in several ways between the operations of manu-
facture and those of agriculture.
First of all there was the dependence of these industries on
agriculture for their raw materials. At this period woollen and
linen were the chief textile manufactures.1 The latter was far
and away the more important, being in fact to Scotland in 1760
what wool was to England at the same date. The point of im-
portance, however, is that the raw material of both was produced
at home in the ordinary course of agriculture. Small spots of
flax were to be seen on every farm, while most of the inhabitants
reared sheep for their wool.2 Flax was indeed imported to some
extent, chiefly from Holland and the Baltic.3 The Board of
Manufactures, however, had always been at pains to promote
through the granting of premiums, the production within the
country of the raw material of the linen industry. The reduction
of the consumption of foreign flax was represented as a desirable
object.4 If the end aimed at was not altogether achieved, the
contrast with the state of affairs which was subsequently to exist
in the case of the cotton industry, was nevertheless in almost all
respects complete.
But there was a closer connection still. The labour employed
in manufacture was to a very large extent the same as that engaged
in agriculture. This state of affairs was rendered possible by
the nature of the existing organization of the textile industries.
With the various forms in which that organization manifested
itself, we are not immediately concerned. No matter what basis
of classification we adopt, let it be the degree of dependence or
independence of the capitalist producer, or the extent to which
production was carried on for sale or for household consumption,
in almost all manufacture is found to take place within the home
and to be in fact ' domestic.' This, of course, could be only
where the spinning-wheel and the hand-loom were the typical
1 Some Notices of the Principal Manufactures of the West of Scotland, p. 183.
2 Statistical Account, vii. p. 252.
3 R. Pococke, Tours, p. 214 ; C. Cordiner, Antiquities and Scenery of the North of
Scotland, p. 50; Statistical Account, x. p. 190; D. Bremner, Industries of Scotland,
p. 226.
4 Lord Kames, Progress of Flax Husbandry, pp. 13-14.
of Scotland in 1760 19
instruments of production. Instances of factory organization
in the form of loom-shops, established with a view to the more
effective supervision of work, could be dated from the seventeenth
century1 and were moderately frequent throughout the eighteenth,2
but where manufacturing operations were carried on without the
aid of power, the chief incentive to that form of organization was
lacking, and the household continued the typical unit of pro-
duction. It was under these conditions that the textile industries
were to be found as scattered as the source of the raw material,3
while the raisers of that raw material played an important part
in the subsequent processes of manufacture.
Thus the preparation of flax and wool for manufactures was a
recognised part of farmwork.4 Lint fibre was pulled, rippled,
steeped, beetled, scutched and heckled on the farm.5 But not
only so. Once prepared it was later worked up by hands
obtained from the ranks of agricultural labour, or from those who,
if not strictly agricultural workers, yet relied for part at least of
their livelihood upon the products of the soil. Thus spinning
was carried on concurrently with agricultural pursuits. Farmers
engaged female servants who could spin,6 and who were aided
in their work by the farmers' families themselves.7 Men were
employed not only to assist in the harvest, but also to work up
the yarn spun by the family.8 Farmers had weaving shops in
which they employed weavers, and they often wove themselves.9
Weavers were frequently crofters, every householder having a
workshop attached to his dwelling, while he rented a large
garden and a considerable croft and kept a cow.10 A district
divided into crofts and small possessions was considered specially
favourable for the establishment and growth of manufactures.11
Spinning and weaving came to be regarded as a useful means of
XA. M'Lean, Local Industries of Glasgow, p. 136.
2 D. Bremner, Industries of Scotland, pp. 193-4, 199, 227.
3 Of the thirty-two counties of Scotland, in 1758 only three showed no produc-
tion of linen. A. J. Warden, Linen Trade Ancient and Modern, p. 478.
4 A. Wight, Present State of Husbandry in Scotland, i. pp. 91-2 ; Lord Kames,
Progress of Flax Husbandry, pp. 17-18.
5 A. M'Lean, Local Industries of Glasgow, p. 137.
6 W. Jolly, James Duncan, Weaver and Botanist, p. 28.
' Statistical Account, xi. p. 604.
8W. Jolly, op, cit. p. 69. * Ibid. pp. 82, 116.
lQIbid. p. 26. n Statistical Account, xii. p. 112.
20 The Economic Position
ekeing out the miserable returns from agriculture 1 and of paying
the rent of small possessions.2 Time was divided between the
two employments,3 manufacture, however, as a rule claiming only
such hours as were left over from the labours of the field.4 Even
where manufacture might appear the main interest, there was
no clear separation or differentiation. Tradesmen were essenti-
ally husbandmen also, at certain seasons throwing over their
trade and taking to agriculture, so as to make it difficult if not
impossible to determine to which profession they belonged.5 On
the whole it would appear that in this collateral relation of agri-
culture and manufacture the former played the chief part, the
latter being relegated to the secondary position of a useful bye-
employment.
We see then the manner in which that independence of power,
which was one of the chief features of the organization of the
textile industries in 1760, made possible not only a domestic
system of production, but also, as a direct result, the formation
of a close alliance between agriculture and manufacture. This
independence of power, however, meant something more. It
meant in turn an independence of coal and iron. It is here that
we have emphasised from a negative stand-point, as it were, the
relative importance of agriculture. Economically, as we shall
see, it was of as much if not more importance to Scotland that the
textile industries showed an independence of coal and iron, as
that they revealed a direct dependence on agriculture in other
respects.
The history of the early iron industry of Scotland to the
beginning of the seventeenth century is largely a matter of
conjecture. Slag remains are still to be found in many counties,6
indicating apparently an ancient manufacture of iron. Ore of
local origin in the form of bog-ore — ore appearing on the surface
of the earth in a concreted state 7 — would seem to have been used.8
The first really historic iron-work dates from the beginning of
the seventeenth century.9 In the course of the eighteenth
1 Agriculture of Dumbartonshire Reports, ii. p. 14.
^Statistical Account, xi. p. 182 ; xii. p. 581.
3 Ibid, vi p. 360 ; xi. p. 263 ; xx. p. 476.
4 Ibid. vii. p. 208; xi. pp. 271-2.
5 Ibid. vii. p. 1 80; xii. p. 115 ; xi. p. 564.
6 I. Macadam, Notes on the Ancient Iron Industry of Scotland, pp. 96-103.
7J. Williams, Natural History of the Mineral Kingdom, i. p. 375.
8 I. Macadam, op. fit. p. 94. 9 Ibid. p. 109.
of Scotland in 1760 21
century several works sprang up in the wooded highlands of
the north and west.1 The presence of wood as fuel, and not the
existence of native ores was the determining factor in the locali-
zation of these works. One of their main features, in fact, was
the employment in smelting, of ores mainly imported from
England.2 It is not to be imagined, however, on that account
that, apart from bog-ores Scotland had no ordinary iron ores of
her own. Historic mention is made of abundance of iron ore
in Sutherlandshire, 'of which the inhabitants make good iron.'3
In 1613 the export of iron ore from Scotland was prohibited.4
These, of course, may merely be references to bog-ore. At
Edderton, Ross-shire, however, a deep hole is supposed to
indicate the position ot a quarry from which iron was extracted.6
The first historic iron-work in the country had a mine at hand
wrought by English miners.6 Ore for an iron-work at Abernethy
was got from a mine at Tomintoul.7 At Invergarry native
haematite was said to have been used.8
It would appear nevertheless that there were very few instances
of iron-mines known to have been worked in Scotland.9 Long
before 1760 the works where local ores had been employed were
extinct.10 In that year iron-smelting was carried on at two
centres u only, and at both these with ores imported from Eng-
land.12 Under these circumstances it is not surprising to find
that the Bishop of Meath travelling in Scotland in 1760 has
little to say of iron, except that it is ' supposed to be found,' or
' probably abounds,' in certain out-of-the-way places which have
had no subsequent iron history.13 No mention is made of iron-
mining though notice is taken of an attempt to make use of
local ore which, however, had not answered in the smelting.14
Thus in 1760 the local ores of Scotland were virtually unknown,
I Ibid. Invergarry, 1730, p. 124 ; Bunawe, 1730, p. 124 ; Abernethy, 1730,
pp. 126-7 5 Goatfield, 1754, pp. 129-10.
zlbid. pp. 113, 124, 129-30.
3D. W. Kemp, Notes on Early Iron Smelting in Sutherland, p. 15.
4 I. Macadam, op. cit. p. 112.
* Ibid, p. 102. *lbid. p. 105. "Ibid. pp. 127-8.
8 Ibid. p. 124. *lbid. p. 94. 10/3;V. pp. 112-3, 128.
II Ibid. First historic works at Letterewe probably extinct before 1 660, p. 112;
Invergarry soon ceased to work, p. 90 ; Abernethy ceased working 1739, p. 128 ;
Goatfield and Bunawe in 1886 only a few years blown out, p. 90.
12 Ibid. pp. 129, 130. 1S R. Pococke, Tours, pp. 93, 137.
u Ibid. p. 25.
22 The Economic Position
and certainly unused in the production of iron. What iron
smelting there was, was conducted on a most insignificant scale
with ores imported from England.
If in 1760 Scotland depended almost wholly on English ores
for her iron smelting works, it would appear also that till well
on in the eighteenth century, she relied mainly on the same
source for a large part of her supply of hardware.1 At this date
Scotland did indeed possess some trade of her own in manu-
factured iron. The raw materials, however, in the form of bar-
iron were furnished on this occasion by importation, chiefly from
Sweden and Russia.2 Holland in one instance provided a nail
manufactory of one of the Eastern Counties with the old
iron requisite for the pursuance of that trade.3 Iron was a
common import at the most insignificant ports.4 The extent
of the trade could be judged from its position in Glasgow, the
subsequent economic fortunes of which were to be so intimately
bound up with the production and manufacture of iron. The
trade there dated from 1732, having arisen largely in response
to a demand for agricultural implements from the new markets
of the American Plantations.5 The paltry nature of the industry
was its most striking feature. In 1750 the iron consumed by
Glasgow was no more than 400 tons.6 In 1777, 500 tons was
considered a large figure by a historian of the city at that date.7
It was a humble trade indeed which could hail a project for the
production of iron toys as a promising outlet for expansion.8
The two branches of the iron trade at this period reveal alike in
their insignificance and dependence on outside sources for their
supply of raw materials, a very close degree of correspondence.
The condition of both bespeaks a time where the whole frame-
work of economic life was different from what it was later to
become, and where more especially, there was no demand for
iron as the raw material of machines.
With the coal trade of 1760 the position was somewhat
different. Lack of development was here by no means so
1 Case of the Linen Manufacture of Scotland, p. i, 1887, b. 60 (38) Brit. Mus;
Present State of Scotland Considered, p. 49, 8227 aa. 44 (3) Brit. Mus.
2J. Rae, Life of Adam Smith, p. 93.
8 Statistical Account, xii. p. 514. 4 R. Pococke, Tours, passim.
5 J. Gibson, History of Glasgow, p. 242 ; G. Stewart, Progress of Glasgow,
pp. 70-1.
6 J. Rae, op. at. p. 93.
7 J. Gibson, of. cit. p. 242. 8 Ibid. p. 249.
of Scotland in 1760 23
complete. Thus if Pococke travelling in that year found little
to say of iron, he makes frequent reference to coal. Certain
country near Glasgow he mentions as ' full of coals ' ; at Leven
he passed ' some great coal pits and the wagon roads from these
to the sea ' ; Alloa was ' a very disagreeable coal town ' ; Dysart
had ' great collieries.' l Considerable activity then would appear
to have been shown in the production of coal. The picture,
however, is in some measure misleading, as may be seen from
considering the nature and extent of the coal-working of the time.
The successive stages through which methods of coal-getting
pass, from the digging of superficial supplies or outcroppings
to the sinking of shafts measure in some degree, response to
growth of demand and indicate also, progressive steps in the
development of mining. The fact that even subsequent to 1760
outcroppings were still being worked, throws an interesting
light on the existing state of coal production.2 No less so does
the shallow nature of the shafts then in use. The ' great
collieries ' of Dysart were at this period worked only to a depth
of 25 fathoms.3 Even thirty years later a pit of sixty fathoms
was considered beyond a moderate depth,4 while some were as
shallow as three.5 The flooding of mines, for long the bugbear
of mine-masters, proved the chief obstacle to deeper workings.6
The small extent to which mechanical devices were employed to
overcome this difficulty is suggestive. Rude machines worked
by hand, horse, wind or water power had early been tried.7 The
success of these efforts, however, was limited.
Steam was first employed in Scotland ' to raise water by fire '
probably some little time previous to 1719, at which date it is
recorded the second steam engine used for that purpose was
erected.8 These engines, however, were not generally adopted.
The first steam engine in the Glasgow district was not built till
I763-9 The Statistical Account has many references to steam
engines as having been constructed for the first time in various
mines for the purpose of raising water, at dates subsequent to
1 R. Pococke, Tours, pp. 60, 276, 290, 281.
2 Statistical Account, v. p. 346 ; vii. pp. 9, 13, 403.
3 R. Pococke, op. clt. p. 281.
^Statistical Account, v. pp. 532-3.
*lbid. xii. p. 102. 6 Ibid. i. p. 373.
7 A. S. Cunningham, Mining in the Kingdom of Fife, pp. 5-9 \ R. Bald, General
View of the Coal Trade of Scotland, pp. 4-11.
8 'Statistical Account, vii. p. n. 9 R. Bald, op. cit. p. 23.
24 The Economic Position
I76O.1 Many pits remained without engines at all.2 Thus
though steam engines had been employed in mines over forty
years previously, in 1760 they were still comparatively rare.
Under these circumstances mines were only partially worked,
as much coal being taken out as could be procured without the
aid of ' fire engines.' 3 Thereafter they were abandoned. The
Statistical Account makes frequent mention of mines which
have been ' given up,' * formerly worked,' ' not wrought these
many years.' 4 In one place four years represented the length
of period during which coal could be wrought dry.5 Working
was discontinued when free level coal had been worked out,6 or
when human effort was overpowered by water.7 Rich seams
lay at great depths unworked,8 mines incommoded with water
lay open to the enterprise of future adventurers.9 Not only were
many coal seams partially worked and some abandoned, others
had never been tapped on account of their depth.10
It would appear then, that the economic circumstances of the
time, did not justify expenditure on those mechanical devices
which were at hand to prevent the return to nature of gifts which
were free to be won. The most significant fact of all, however,
is that even where there were no apparent obstacles in the way
of mining operations, seams of coal remained unworked. This
was to be true even at a later date. In a parish where coals were
to be found on almost every farm no coal work was carried on ;
large beds of excellent coal remained unexploited ; in certain
lands unwrought coal abounded ; in other places valuable seams
remained untouched.11 Those were the days when farmers in
the course of agriculture ran across the mineral, digging it out
for their own use.12
The explanation of this meagre exploitation of the coal
resources of Scotland is to be tound in the nature of the then
demand. Much coal had formerly been used in the manu-
facture of salt, but with the decay of that trade in the course of the
1 Statistical Account, iv. p. 371 ; v. p. 257; ix. pp. 8, 299,; xi. p. 492;
xiv. p. 543.
ix. p. 299. *lbid. iv. p. 371.
ii. p. 432; iii. p. 488 ; ii. p. 244. * Ibid. v. p. 257.
*lbid. xii. p. 539. ''Ibid. xii. p. 539. 8 Ibid. x. pp. 144-5.
* Ibid. vii. p. 13. ™lbid. xi. p. 492 ; xx. p. 154.
11I6U. ii. p. 368 ; iii. p. 464 ; iv. p. 329 ix. p. 337.
. xii. p. 102.
of Scotland in 1760 25
eighteenth century, many salt-pans had gone out of use1 and with
them certain coal workings.2 The demand for household uses
could not be great, where peat by itself, or along with coal
provided, and continued to provide, a ready source of fuel.3
Even in a district abounding in coal many farmers and cottagers
were found to burn peat in part.4 What demand there was,
was not necessarily effective. The wretched state of communi-
cations, which found even in the shortest distances insuperable
obstacles, prevented the general use of coal as fuel5 and hindered
its export.6 More important still, however, were certain
elements in demand then lacking altogether but subsequently
of immense importance. Thus coal had no economic value in
the production of power. This was virtually true when steam
engines were employed in mines only, and that but rarely. But
further, for all intents and purposes there was no demand for
coal in the production of iron. Smiths may have used it in their
forges,7 but not so with smelting. As we saw, it was to the
woods of the Highlands that the iron works of the time migrated.
The first requisite of the iron-master was an adequate wood
supply.8 Attempts had, indeed, been made to smelt iron with
coal. A sixteenth century writer makes mention of certain black
stones which ' resolve and meltes irne.' 9 In 1661 a monopoly
is said to have been granted for the manufacture of iron with coal.10
We have no real evidence, however, that coal was ever used in
Scotland for iron manufacture before I76o.u The furnaces of
the day made use of charcoal.12 In view of the demand, the
finding of crop coal in 1760, and the generally shallow nature of
the pits becomes understandable. It is not surprising, taking
all the circumstances into account, that mines should usually be
partially wrought and very often abandoned, while many re-
mained untapped altogether.
1 R. Bald, General View of Coal Trade of Scotland, p. 84 ; Sir J. Dalrymple,
Address and Proposals on the subject of the Coat, Tar, and Iron Branches of Trade, p. 7.
2 Statistical Account, xi. p. 549.
3 Ibid, i. pp. 157, 319-420; ii. pp. 42, 389. *lbid. i. p. 349.
*lKd. i. p. 339 ; ii. p. 147; vi. p. 99.
6 Ibid. vi. p. 407 ; xii. p. 539. 7 Ibid. v. p. 346 ; xii. p. 541.
8 1. Macadam, Notes on the Early Iron Industry of Scotland, pp. 105-6, 126-7.
9 Quoted A. S. Cunningham, op. fit. p. 4.
10 D. W. Kemp, Notes on Early Iron Smelting in Sutherland, p. 23.
11 1. Macadam, Notes on the Early Iron Industry of Scotland, p. 95.
12 Ibid, pp. 124, 129-30.
26 The Economic Position
Under such conditions, common to both the coal and the
iron trades, it was only natural that ' the article of mines in
Scotland ' should seem indeed to be ' greatly neglected.' 1
Thus viewed from two distinct stand-points, whether in the
dependence of the textile manufactures on agriculture, or in the
relative insignificance and undeveloped state of the coal and iron
trades, agriculture stands out clearly as the predominant industry
of the time, and as the basis on which to a very large extent the
whole economic organization of the day turns. Agriculture in
1760 might be represented as it had been earlier in the century,
' the main source from whence all the rivulets run and water the
body, the main and first spring that must give motion and life
to all the parts and branches of improving the nation.2
But what of the nature of this agricultural basis in 1760 ?
It was nothing if not poor. General improvement was the need
of the time.3 Some improving, indeed, had taken place prior
to this date, but it was only after 1760 that great changes com-
menced.4 At that time and even at much later dates estates
still remained in a state of nature.5 The husbandmen of the
time were 'unskilful and inanimated,'6 ' tenacious of old practices,7
' muleish * in their attitude to change,8 ' creeping in the beaten
track of miserable husbandry.' 9 ' Nothing,' it was reported,
' could be more wretched than the agricultural state of North
Britain.'10 The extent to which feudal services continued to be
exacted,11 and rents to be paid in kind,12 gives some indication of
the undeveloped state of cultivation. The husbandry of the
day was conducted on the outfield and infield system.13 The
infield was sown always with the same crop, never fallowed, and
JM. Postlethwayt, Universal Dictionary of Trade.
2 W. Macintosh, An Essay on ways and means for inclosing, fallowing and planting in
Scotland, p. 257.
3 A. Grant, Practical Farmers' Pocket Companion, p. 4.
4J. Ramsay, Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, ii. p. 243 ; Analysis
of Statistical Account, p. 234.
6 J. Ramsay, op. cit. p. 217 ; G. Chalmers, Caledonia, v. p. 7 ; Statistical Account,
xx. p. 63.
6 G. Chalmers, Caledonia, v. p. 7. 7 A. Grant, op. cit. pp. 3-4.
8 A. Grant, Farmers' New Tears Gift, p. 2.
9 A. Wight, Present State of Husbandry in Scotland, \. p. vii.
10 G. Chalmers, Caledonia, v. p. 5. " Statistical Account, i. pp. 432-3.
11 J. Colville, By-ways of History, pp. 12-13.
13 A. Grant, Practical Farmers' Pocket Companion, p. 3.
of Scotland in 1760 27
dunged only once in three years, while the outfield, the re-
maining part of the farm, consisting of a piece of land taken
from ' lee ' every year, was never manured, but three or more
crops having been taken from it successively, it was left in ' lee '
again for four, five or six years. In both cases the soil was
ruined and impoverished,1 sometimes in fact lying worse than
nature had left it ' for being abused with bad tillage and ill-
directed rigs.' 2
Actual methods of culture and agricultural instruments were
as bad as could be devised.3 It was not uncommon to see four
horses and four oxen dragging and staggering before a large
heavy plough at a rate of one mile per hour.4 Bad ploughing
and cultivation generally, resulted in a soil full of noxious roots
and weeds,5 seeds sometimes being liberally bestowed so as to
keep them in check.6 The returns to agriculture were naturally
meagre, seldom yielding more than four or fivefold on the infield,
while the hungry crops of the outfield seldom produced a return
of two to one.7 It must have been the exceptional nature of the
scene which made Pennant at a later date paint a somewhat
glowing picture of ' streams of corn darting from the hills to the
centre of the valley, and others again radiating from the coast.' 8
A truer representation of the state of agriculture was to be found
in the famine of 1783, or in the statement that the inhabitants
of a certain district were distressed at one period of each year
for want of meal.9
The miserable state of Scottish agriculture in 1760 was by
no means due entirely to the backward methods of husbandry
then in practice. The spread of a more enlightened cultivation
was subsequently to work wonders, but later experience was to
prove also that very definite limitations had been placed on the
power of agricultural improvement. The best-laid schemes of
improving were set at nought by an unpropitious soil and climate ;
soils proved completely ungrateful in their response to manure ;
1 Ibid. pp. 3-4.
2 A. Wight, op, cit. i. pp. 29-30. * Ibid, i. pp. 3, 5, 34.
4 Statistical Account, xx. p. 6.
5 A. Grant, Practical Farmers'' Pocket Companion, pp. 3-4.
6 Statistical Account, xx. p. 195.
7 A. Grant, Practical Farmers' Pocket Companion, pp. 3-4 ; A. Wight, op. cit. i.
p. 5 ; Analysis of Statistical Account, p. 235.
8T. Pennant, Tours, 1772, ii. p. 148.
9 A. Wight, op. cit. i. p. 93.
28 The Economic Position
to plough was not necessarily to plough to advantage.1 Certain
lands laboured under disadvantages, which no effort of genius
or of industry could surmount,2 while others even under the most
cautious and prudent management, speedily returned to their
native barren soil.3 Various factors contributed to produce this
result. Sir John Sinclair, basing his opinion on evidence
supplied from every parish in the country, designated the soil
of Scotland as in general sterile.4 Now it was poor, hungry,
rugged and of the meanest description ;5 now bleak and wettish,
encumbered with stones, abounding in waste corners, unfriendly
to vegetation, in places scarcely being able to bear the expense
of erecting stone walls for its enclosure, at times worth scarcely
sixpence an acre.6 The very configuration of the land imposed
obstacles in the way of husbandry, irregularity of surface render-
ing cultivation not only difficult and expensive,7 but often
impossible.8 And further, a climate precarious and capricious
proved an invincible bar to agricultural improvement, by re-
tarding vegetation,9 and in some cases regularly preventing good
crops from being safely garnered.10
Here then, apart altogether from the backward state of
agriculture generally common at the time, was an obstacle of a
more permanent kind precluding the possibility of development
beyond a certain point. Most certain it was to one writer, after
having considered the ' distresses ' under which Scotland laboured
from soil and climate, that nature had ' put a negative against
productive revenue and extensive agriculture in that kingdom.' u
The point of view from which it was possible to stress the
economic poverty, rather than the economic prosperity of Scotland
in 1760, now becomes clear. That year did, as we saw, witness
a marked degree of economic progress, the result in large part
of the removal of many of those conditions which for long had
1 Statistical Account, x. p. 82 ; xi. p. 3 ; xii. p. 31.
*lbid. vii. p. 231. *lbid. xii. p. 72.
4 Sir J. Sinclair, Analysis of Statistical Account, p. 72.
5 A. Wight, op.'cit. i. pp. 17, 97,
6 Statistical Account, i. p. 348 ; ii. p. 58 ; xx. p. 62 ; i. pp. 264, 340; ii.
p. 239.
^ Ibid, ii. p. 44. *A. Wight, op. cit. i. p. 24.
'Sir J. Sinclair, Analysis of Statistical Account, p. 104.
10 Statistical Account, xx. p. 27
11 J. Knox, View of the British Empire, more especially Scotland, i. p. 109.
of Scotland in 1760 29
impeded material development, but peculiar natural limitations
of soil, climate, physical configuration, still remained. Thus
though there might be more incentive to the exercise of sustained
economic effort, the field for the play of that effort was at once
poor and stubborn. Such a position of affairs was of peculiar
moment to a country when the whole economic organization of
the day centred mainly round the position of agriculture. A real
barrier was raised in the path of advance to material wealth. It
is on these grounds mainly, due allowance always being made
for the continued effects of causes which in themselves had long
ceased to operate, that the relative economic poverty of Scotland
in 1760 is to be explained. The impossibility of surmounting
this obstacle by direct assault had been seen in the definite
limitations set by nature to the success of the efforts of agri-
cultural improvers. In point of fact the difficulty was to be
overcome, not by elimination, but through a process of circum-
vention accomplished in the course of changes in economic life
involving at the same time an entirely new form of economic
organization. As a result there was to be a moving away from
the importance of agriculture as the basis of industry, and a
revelation of the essential relativity of all former conceptions of
wealth or poverty of natural resources.
It is in this way that the year 1760 is of peculiar importance
in the economic history of Scotland. In the latter part of that
year great buildings were making at Carron for iron-smelting
houses.1 These works in a special sense typify the commence-
ment of a new industrial order, and indicate a new phase in
economic development. The land round Carron might be a
mere moor 2 or an uncultivated stretch of peat and heath,3 but
the coal and iron-stone dug therefrom, and linked together in
the production of iron 4 were to form the basis of a trade, compar-
able in its returns to none under the sun save that of plundering
Bengal.5
It is interesting to trace in the Statistical Account, the growing
appreciation of the nature and extent of the change beginning
to be thus effected in economic life. Under new conditions,
1R. Pococke, Tours, p. 296.
2T. Pennant, Tours, 1769, p. 263.
3G. Jars, Pay ages Metallurgiques, pp. 270-1.
4 Ibid. pp. 265-70.
5 Sir J. Dalrymple, Address and Proposals on the subject of the Coal, Tar and Iron
Branches of Trade, p. 13.
30 The Economic Position
the natural resources of the country come to appear in quite a
different guise. Scotland contained many lands, where a poverty
of soil seemed almost to accompany the presence of minerals.
A heath-covered soil of poor clay ; lands not worth half-a-crown
per acre ; fields which for years had not yielded a crop sufficient
to refund the farmer for seed and labour, yet contained abundance
of coal and iron.1 Hitherto stress had been laid on the infertility
of the soil.2 Now there is a transference of emphasis from the
agricultural poverty of the land to the worth of its minerals, and
a conscious recognition of the extent to which one may compensate
for the other. A certain parish with all its disadvantages of soil
and climate, claims to find ample compensation in its buried
wealth.3 Minerals are recognised as destined to become
objects of importance,4 and as presenting profitable fields for
future investment,5 as a result of which the whole face of the
country will be transformed.6 Agriculture begins to lose its
position of relative importance. How long certain districts at
present almost entirely agricultural are likely, in view of their
possessing minerals, to remain so, it is now difficult to determine.7
Already in certain instances agriculture, the basis and support
of all other arts, shows signs of being outrivalled,8 not, however,
without a corresponding gain in material wealth, a greater estate
indeed being found to arise in this way than could ever have been
reaped from the surface of the soil.9 It might well be in fact,
as one writer expressed it, in somewhat more picturesque language
perhaps than the circumstances of the case demanded, that ' in
this instance, and in many others which have not yet been suffi-
ciently explored, the bleak moors of Caledonia, and her hills
covered with blue mists will be found to contain some of her
most valuable treasures.'10 The prophecy was to be more than
fulfilled. In the end it was to be a very far cry from the early
days of coal mining in the thirteenth century, when a mine
charter granted the right to dig coal only from land which was
not arable.11
In the process of movement away from an economic organi-
zation turning mainly on agriculture, the founding of the Carron
I Statistical Account, xi. pp. 430-1 ; x. pp. 213, 340.
-Ibid. vii. p. 603. *lbid. xx. pp. 2, 152. *lbid. ii. p. 215.
*lbid. ii. p. 78. 6 Ibid. v. pp. 324-5. 7 Ibid. v. p. 340.
8 Ibid. ii. p. 162. * Ibid. vi. p. 94. 10 Ibid. xx. p. 153.
II A. S. Cunningham, Mining in the Kingdom of Fife, p. 3.
of Scotland in 1760 31
iron-works was no more than an episode, though a peculiarly
significant one as indicating the first stirrings of still more
comprehensive changes destined to take place in every depart-
ment of economic life. These changes as they ran their course
were to constitute what has come to be known, not altogether
correctly, as ' the Industrial Revolution.' The whole tendency
of that movement was to deprive agriculture of its relative im-
portance as the touchstone of economic prosperity. It is just
on that account that this ' revolution in industry ' comes to
occupy a position of the utmost significance in the history of the
material development of Scotland.
JOHN M. DICKIE.
The Dalkeith Portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots
THE little known Dalkeith portrait of the Queen is not com-
mented on by Sir George Scharf (who, indeed, saw it not
very long before his death), and I do not notice it in Mr. Foster's
great work on the portraits of Queen Mary. The late Mr.
Andrew Lang, who opened out a new field by identifying the
4 Leven and Melville portrait ' of Queen Mary by comparing
the jewels on it with those in the Queen's Inventories, probably
never saw it ; but his article in the Scottish Historical Review
(vol. iii. p. 129) and the method derived from it has made the
writer attempt a similar line of work in this note.
This is the description of the portrait which is on panel :
' Half-length f to the right, eyes to front. The hair is waved
and auburn. She wears a dark dress which is turned back
with a high collar, lined with white opening over a stiff front
of cloth of silver on which strings of pearls are arranged. The
decolletage is filled in with a soft chemisette of lawn finished
with a small ruff. The cap is of lace, and on it are jewels and
a spray of flowers above the ear at the left side, a veil falling at
the back of the head. A jewelled necklace and cross round the
neck. Over the shoulders and down the dress is a garniture
of narrow gold chains or passementerie, filled in with silvery
material, toning with that of the front, caught at intervals with
jewels of table-cut diamonds. The sleeves of the dress are
striped with narrow lines of golden passementerie, something
like that on the garniture of the bodice.'
The portrait is obviously one of Mary in her youth, and
must either have been painted before she left France in 1561
or copied from a picture of that date, for the reasons following.
The first thing to be noticed is the great likeness (though
the head and figure are turned in the opposite direction) between
the features in this portrait and those in the undoubted chalk
sketch * in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris of Mary as
1 Reproduced in The Portraits and Jewels of Mary Stuart, by Andrew Lang. See
also Scot. Hist. Review, vol. iii. p. 137.
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, QUEEN CONSORT OF FRANCE.
The Dalkeith Portrait.
In the possession of His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, K.T.
Portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots 33
Dauphine of France about 1559, attributed to either Francis
Clouet or Jehan de Court.
The long rope of pearls on the front of the dress is arranged
in the same way in both pictures, looped across the bust to the
centre and then falling in two long strings to the waist or
below.
Mary's ropes of pearls were famous,1 and in one or two of
the portraits they can be seen arranged in different ways ; here
we have them exactly as in the chalk sketch, but with the addi-
tion of a row worn across the bust just at the top of the stiff
front of the dress and below the lawn chemisette. The carcan
or necklace in the chalk sketch is not the same ; it is entirely
composed of large pearls. Yet the carcan in the Dalkeith
portrait has a very important claim to notice. This carcan^
with its pendant cross, is formed of diamonds, alternating with
entre-deux of large pearls, set in groups of five. Now in the
Inventories of Mary's jewels among all the carcans, colliers,
cotoires, ceintures, etc., one can find many with entre-deux or
4 couppletz ' of pearls set in clusters of two, three, four, or even
six, but only three instances of groups of five pearls.
In the Inventory 2 of the jewels given back to the Crown of
France, when Mary became the widow of Fra^ois II., before
she returned to Scotland in 1561, we find the following
articles :
A Bordure de touret, a grand collier d'or and a carcan^ all three
composed of diamonds with entre-deux or couppletz of pearls
set in clusters of five. In the Bordure the Inventory mentions
' huict coupplets de perles J and does not mention the groups of five;
but as there were forty pearls in the valuation, it is obvious
that it matched the collier and carcan. In the collier the ' cinq
grosses perles rondes ' are noted. This is the description of the
carcan. ' Un carcquant de pareille fa9on auquel y a cinq
dyamans deux en grosse poinct, un grande table taiHe* a face
et deux petites tables dont y en a une rompue par la moiete et
six coupplets de perles entre-deux ou y a a chacune cinq
perles/
This being so, it becomes even more evident, when con-
sidered in connection with the cordon of pearls on the front of
the dress (arranged as in the chalk sketch of 1559) that the
1 Queen Elizabeth bought six of the ropes in 1568.
2 Robertson's Inventaires de la Royne eFEcosse, pp. 192, 193, 194.
34 The Dalkeith Portrait of
portrait represents Mary in her youth as Queen of France.1
While dealing with the coupplets of pearls, set in groups of five,
it may be noted that in a portrait of Elizabeth of Austria, wife
of Charles IX. (the succeeding Queen to Mary), she also wears
a carcan and grand collier of table jewels with entre-deux of pearls
in fives ; but the stones between are not diamonds, but alter-
nate tables of rubies and emeralds. It can be seen from the
Inventories that parts of sets of jewels were taken off and used
with other pieces of jewellery. It is possible that Mary's
successor may however have had the design copied with slight
alterations.
The cross I have not been able to identify exactly. A large
cross of nine diamonds was given back with the other jewels
to the Crown of France,2 but the cross in the Dalkeith portrait
has only seven stones in it. Mary had several crosses, but the
only one with seven diamonds 3 I can find is mentioned
as having two cabochon rubies and, in addition, a pendant
pearl. The pearl is noted as being added to the cross4 from
some loose pearls. * II a este prins des perles cydessus a
pendre pour metter a une croix de diamans et rubiz nue grosse
perle,' but as we have seen previously jewels were constantly
being altered, so the rubiz may, like the pearl, have been added
to the original cross as an afterthought.
The jewels on the cap and on the ornamentation of the dress
resemble the table stones of the necklace. They might be
parts of the Bordure de touret and collier, mentioned before,
detached from their clusters of pearls. There were nine table
diamonds ' de plusiers grandeurs ' in the Bordure and eleven in
the collier. There were also four extra table diamonds to
lengthen the collier. Allowing for, say, five on the cap, this
would give fifteen for the dress, which would accord with the
distribution, so far as one can see, in this picture. In any case,
Mary had many other jewelled boutons? as can be seen in the
Inventories.
1 Bapst, Histoire desjoyaux de la Couronne de France, pp. 55, 58.
* A 1'epoque de Marie Stuart . . . les entre deux ne sont plus de noeuds, mais des
pompons de quatres ou cinq perles ou des barettes de deux perles.'
So the beautiful Scottish queen's fashion might be copied often.
* Robertson's Inventaires, p. 197.
*lbid. p. 76. *Ibid. p. 82.
5 ' Neuf tablet de diamants faicter a buttons,' Ibid. p. 5, and others.
Mary, Queen of Scots 35
Taking, therefore, into consideration the pearl cordon on the
dress, the jewels on it and the cap, the carcan with its diamonds
and entre-deux of pearls set in groups of five, one may conclude
that this picture is a portrait and a correct portrait of Mary,
either painted before she left France or an early copy of such
an original.
It is not easy to say where the picture came from originally,
but it has been at Dalkeith for more than two centuries. There
is a tradition that it was once at Smeaton ; but that helps little,
for Smeaton was bought in 1707 by Anna, Duchess of Buccleuch,
the widow of Monmouth,1 and after that it was used as a residence
by the Buccleuch family, with frequent changes of ' plenish-
ings ' between it and Dalkeith Palace.
John Loveday of Caversham mentions it in the account of
his visit to Dalkeith in 1732 as ' a picture of Mary, Q. of Scots,'
and it was doubtless included in the pictures Defoe and his
co-editors saw at Dalkeith before 1769 and chronicled as 'some
Royal Originals.'
It was reserved for Pennant to give a full and true description
of this portrait. He says, in writing of his visit to Dalkeith
Palace in July 1769 and of the pictures there :
A beautiful head of Mary Stuart : her face sharp, thin and
young, yet has a likeness to some others of her pictures done
before misfortune altered her : her dress, a strait gown, open
at the top reaching to her ears, a small cap and a small ruff,
with a red rose in her hand.' MARIA STEUART.
1 The Duchess' father, Francis Earl of Buccleuch, purchased the estate of Dal-
keith in 1642, from William Douglas, 6th Earl of Morton. Queen Mary had
visited James 4th Earl of Morton (afterwards Regent) at Dalkeith in 1565.
' Teste Meipso ' and the Parochial Law of Tithes
IN the number of the Scottish Historical Review of April, 1918
(xv. 265), I drew attention to a passage in a treatise by
Edward Henryson on the tenth Title of the Second Book of
Justinian's Institutes and to the Decretals of Innocent III. which
he cites in support of the form teste meipso. The general ques-
tion involved was further discussed by Mr. R. L. Poole (ibid.
359), and in the English Historical Review of April, 1920, by
Miss Hilda Prescott (xxxv. 214). Neither of these writers is
concerned with the specific case to which Henryson refers, but
the Rev. Thomas Miller deals with it in an article on ' The
Parochial Law of Tithes * in the March number of the Juridical
Review (xxxii. 54). Mr. Miller has taken the enquiry a step
further by identifying the instrumentum which was referred to
in the Papal letter of 1206 as the Concordia of the time of David I.
which appears in the Dunfermline and Cambuskenneth Registers
and in Thomson's edition of the Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland
(i. 359), and by explaining the meaning of the phrase testibus
sublatis de media.1
The additional light which Mr. Miller has provided enables
the third point, with which the Papal letter deals, to be precisely
stated. The four points dealt with are as follows :
(1) The legal doctrine reconventio does not apply in an arbitra-
tion. In other words, the arbiters are limited to the original
terms of the reference. The decision of Innocent on this point
appears in the Corpus Juris Canonici, in the Title De arbitris
(Decretal. Greg. IX. Lib. I, Tit. 43, cap. 6).
(2) Documents can be produced in process up to the date
on which judgment is given. The decision appears in the title
De fide instrumentorum (Ibid. Lib. II. Tit. 22, cap. 9).
1 It must be noted that Innocent does not call the instrumentum a concordia, but
an instrumentum super compositione inita. The canonists, however, gave such a wide
meaning to the term instrumentum that on re-consideration I am prepared to
accept Mr. Miller's view.
c Teste Meipso ' 37
(3) Local custom to that effect may give to an instrument the
character of an instrumentum authenticum. This decision also
appears in the title De fide instrumentorum.
(4) An action containing possessory and petitory conclusions
may be terminated by a single decree. This decision appears
in the title De causa possessions et proprietatis (Ibid. Lib. II. Tit.
12, cap. 6).
The question with which we are concerned is the third, and
Innocent states it as follows :
' Ex quo autem scrupulus tertiae dubitationis emersit, quod
monachi supradicti excipientes contra canonicos supradictos
asseruerunt controversiam super praefatis decimis tempore in-
clytae recordationis regis David fuisse per concordiam termi-
natam, super compositione inita instrumentum in medium
producentes praefati regi sigillo munitum. Super quod nostrum
postulastis responsum, utrum instrumentum illud, testibus sublatis
de medio, per se sufficere valeat ad probandum propositum, cum
hinc indefuerit allegatum.' The words printed in italics concisely
present the point at issue. Innocent's answer was as follows :
4 Super tertio vero capitulo talker respondemus, quod inquiratis
diligentius veritatem. Et si consuetude illius patriae obtinet
approbata ut instruments illius regis fides adhibeatur in talibus,
vos secure poterites praefatum admittere instrumentum ; prae-
sertim cum saepedictus rex tantae fuerit honestatis quod ipsius
instrumenta maximae auctoritatis sint in partibus Scoticanis.' *
It is clear that the question concerned the validity of the instru-
ment and not its subject matter, that the point involved was the
competence of certain evidence and not, as Mr. Miller claims,
a question of tithes. This is borne out by the position assigned
to the passage in the Decretals of Gregory IX., which were com-
piled by Raymond of Pennaforte within twenty years of the
death of Innocent III., and sent by Gregory to the Universities
of Bologna and Paris in 1234. Gregory and Raymond treated
the question as being one of probation, and the decision of
Innocent III. was soon recognised as the locus classicus for the
rule that for the purpose of proof local custom may give ' authen-
ticity ' to instruments which are not admissible by the strict
letter of the Canon Law.2
1 Migne, P.L. ccxv. 1 127.
2 A reference may be permitted to the Treatise of Lanfrancus de Oriano, De
instrumentorum fide et productione (Zilettus, iv. 29 et sqq.) : ' Instrumentum publicum
:undum Innoc. in c. j. de fi. instr. dicitur scriptura, quae plenam facit fidem
38 David Baird Smith
What were instrumenta authentica ? They have been defined
by a modern canonist of great authority as ' ea quae ex se fidem
faciunt : sive ex oppositions sigilli authentic^ puta episcopi vel
principis saecularis cut creditur de consuetudine ; sive alio modo,
ita ut ad sui valitudinem non requiratur aliud adminiculum.' l
It will be observed that the main requirement for an instrument
of this class was an authentic seal, and that the definition repro-
duces the decision of Innocent III. with which we are concerned.
The document obtained ' authenticity ' by the presence of King
David's seal.
Before the time of Innocent III., Pope Alexander III. (1159-
1181) had decided in an English appeal that an instrument lost
its force through the death of the witnesses unless it was executed
' per manum publicam ' or bore an ' authenticum sigillum.' *
Again, before the date of Innocent's decision, Richardus Anglicus
(tI237) wrote in his Ordo judiciarius (circa 1190) : ' Si instru-
menta munita fuerint sigillo authentico, valent etiam testibus
mortuis.' 3 The doctrine thus laid down was an extension of that
of the Roman Law of the later Empire and of the Canon Law.4
It probably marked a recognition by the Church of feudal claims
and of the provisions of the Customary Law. The claims of
national jurists are indicated by Bracton's note of 1224 : * Testi-
ficatio Domini Regis per cartam vel viva voce omnem aliam
producta coram judice sine alterius adminiculo, unde tali instrumento publico
producto in judicio non est opus, quod testes in eo descripti producantur et
deponant, nee est opus, quod tabellio deponat dictum suum, immo mortuis testibus
et tabellione instrumentum facit plenam fidem . . . Caeterae scripturae censentur
privatae secundum eum (Innocent), nisi eonsuetudo foret, quod certis instrumentis
adhibeatur fides, nam si de consuetudine fides plena adhibeatur aliquibus scripturis,
talis plenam facet fidem licet non sit per notarium confecta. Casus est in c, cum
dilectus de fide instr.' It will be observed that Lanfrancus cites the letter of
Innocent with which we are dealing as his authority for the proposition that local
custom may have the effect of giving a public character to an instrument which is
technically a private one. Had Innocent not granted to the Coneordia of David
this semi-public character, it would have had no effect, for, to quote Lanfrancus,
'quod licit scriptura privata habeat suscriptionem plurium testium, annum,
mensem, diem et similes solemnitates : tamen si testes non recognoverint sub-
scriptiones suas, vel mortui sint, et nulla sit facta comparatio, et pars negat, non
probat' (ibid. §55).
1 Reiffenstuel, Jus Canonicum, iii. 82 ; cf. Reg. Morav. 126.
2Dtcrtt. Greg. IX. lib. ii. tit. 22, cap. 2 ; cf. ibid. tit. 20 cap. 50.
3 Fertile, Storia del Diritto Italiano, vi. (i) 418, n. 53.
* D. xxii. tit. 4 ; C. iv. tit. 20, cap. 1 5 ; Nov. Ixxiii. c. 7.
( Teste Meipso ' 39
probationem excedit';1 and by the compilations of the French
jurists of the thirteenth century.2 Even Innocent III., writing
in 1207 to the Bishop of Ely and other Papal delegates, admon-
ished them to have regard not so much to the number as to the
quality of witnesses ; ' ad multitudinem tantum respici non
oportet, sed ad testium qualitatem.' 3
It is, therefore, somewhat remarkable that Innocent when
he came to deal with the Concordia, with which we are concerned,
should have based its ' authenticity ' on local custom. Henryson
notes his disapproval by citing provisions from the Corpus Juris
Civilis as to the plenitude of Imperial power, and Boehmer of
Halle (fi749), another regalist, writes with reference to this
decision of Innocent : * Instrumenta regum principumque
nunquam carent sigillo authentico, atque inde fidem connatam
habent, non ex consuetudine : alioquin sigillorum authenti-
corum nulla vel lubrica esset fides, si consuetude de fide antea
probanda esset : quod tamen ex decisione pontificis colligen-
dum.' 4 This difficulty makes it necessary to consider the
authority of King David's instrument in the eyes of the Pope.
Innocent recognised the instrument as having in virtue of local
custom the quality of an instrumentum authenticum. Now, in the
Canon Law, this class of instrument was not an instrumentum
/>«£&»#*, but a private instrument which by an additional formality
had been raised to the grade of an instrument approaching, but not
identical with, a public instrument. As time passed, the terms
'public ' and ' authentic * came to be treated as synonyms, but in
the time of Innocent the distinction was a clear one.5 The recogni-
tion of David's instrumentum by the Pope represented the final phase
of the long conflict between the old Papal and Imperial notarial
system and the growing local and feudal independence which
discarded the elaborate formalities of the old European regime.
We may assume that a great Canonist like Innocent was not
prepared to act contrary to the legal system which he did so
r * Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, ii. 669, n. 2.
*e.g. Etablissements de St. Louis (Ed. Viollet, 1886), ii. 348 and iv. 225, where
the editor quotes a text of the fourteenth century : 'sigilla baronum et maxime
habentium altam jurisdictionem sunt autentica et faciunt plenam fidem sine
inscriptione testium et maxime in ducatu Normanie.'
3Migne, P.C. ccxv. 745 ; cf. Decret. Grat. II. c. iv. q. 2 and 3, cap. 3, Si
testes omnes.
4 Corpus Juris Canonici (Halle, 1747), ii. 324.
5 Reiffenstuel, op. cit. iii. 80 et sqq.
40 David Baird Smith
much to preserve. All that he did was to recognise that the
piety of the King and the custom of the country added to the
instrument in question a kind of inferior public character. It
was a grave and from a legal point of view an epoch-making
decision, marking as it did an important relaxation of the Canon
Law of evidence.
The instrument, then, with which we are concerned was an
' authentic ' instrument embodying the terms of a concordia.
The concordia or compositio was frequently resorted to by eccle-
siastics, and the Letters of Innocent III. and the Registers of
the Scottish Monastic Houses contain numerous specimens.
Pope Alexander III. (1159-1181) had decided that 'super
decimis pacifica fieri possit concordia ' and that * si super decimis
inter vos et aliquam personam ecclesiasticam de assensu episcopi
vel archiepiscopi sui compositio facta fuerit, rata perpetuis
temporibus et inconcussa persistat.' * In the Lateran Council
of 1215 Innocent III. ordained that a layman could not act as
arbiter in spiritual matters, and in the eyes of the Pope tithes fell
within that category.2 In passing this decree the Council was
simply reaffirming the canonical practice, and it introduced no
novelty. It was designed to check secular encroachments.3
Mr. Miller has attempted to confer on the instrumentum of
King David the character of an Act of Parliament or at least of
a decision of a Court of Appeal. He has disregarded the
warning which Cosmo Innes inserted in his Introduction to
the Register of Dunfermline against the practice of applying to the
institutions of a primitive society the forms of a later age.4
All that one is justified in saying is that the instrumentum is the
record of the settlement of a dispute between ecclesiastics
effected, so far as the resources of Scotland afforded, in a
canonical way and authenticated by the magnates of the country
in the most solemn manner at their disposal. In the course of
time the compositio gained its developed and canonical form in
Scotland, and was authenticated as an instrumentum publicum by
a notary.5 So long as the form can be traced it maintained itself1
1 Decret. Alex. III. 35, 5 ; Decret. Greg. IX. bk. i. tit. 36, c. 2 ; cf. Decret.
Greg. IX. bk. i. tit. 36, De Transactionibus generally.
2 Decret. Greg. IX. bk. i. tit. 34, c. 8.
3Migne, P.L. ccxv. 849, 1048, 1083, 1097, 1189; ccxvi. 95, 96, 255, 310,
1323, etc.
4 Reg. Dunf. p. xxii.
5 ride e.g. Reg. Pr. St. Andr. 410, and Reg. Ef. Glasg. i. 265, 268.
c Teste Meipso ' 41
clearly distinct from that of a legislative act or of the decree of
a Court.1
Mr. Miller's main argument for the legislative character of
David's concordia is based on the reference which it contains to
the lands in the parish which did not belong to the royal demesne
(c terrae aliorum hominum parochialium '). He argues that the
King by dealing with tithes which were payable from the lands
of his subjects was in effect making a law of general application.
This argument ' begs the question,' in respect that it assumes
that the concordia is an expression of the King's will as a lawgiver.
If we treat the concordia as an arrangement between the parties
representing the Parish Church and the Royal Chapel, it is clear
that no other body had any claim to payment of tithes within
the parish, and that they were not exercising any legislative
function in apportioning between themselves the whole of the
tithe.
Mr. Miller identifies the Concordia of King David with the
assisa Regis David referred to in a precept of William the Lion.
This identification was considered by Connell as possible, but
he was not prepared to accept it (i) because the point in dispute
occurred only between the Bishop of St. Andrews and the
Monastery of Dunfermline ; (2) because the title of the writing
was against the supposition.2
Mr. Miller states, further, that Henryson ' claims that the
Concordia is a statute of the realm.' This is not the case.
Henryson's treatise in which the reference to the decretal of
Innocent III. occurs is devoted to a question of probation, to
the execution of Wills. He was not concerned with the authority
or character of a document but simply with the formalities of
execution, and his claim was that an instrument authenticated
with a royal seal must be treated as an instrumentum publicum,
irrespective of local custom. It does not follow that such an
instrument must be a legislative act of general import. Henryson
does not refer to the Concordia^ and it is very improbable that,
writing as he did in France, he made any attempt to identify it.
Mr. Miller contends, further, that Innocent III. was so much
1 In an instrument of 1235 the Bishop of Dunblane writes of ' Ea que judicia
el concordia terminata sunt' (Chartulary of Lindores, ed. 1903, 54), and the same
listinction between zjudicium and a concordia was made by Pope Honorius III. in
1226-7 (ttM- * !4) 5 c*- Summa de Legibus Normannie, cap. 100 (ed. Tardif. Paris,
1896), p. 245.
2 Law of 'Tithes (Edinburgh, 1815), p. 1 1 n.
42 David Baird Smith
impressed with the substance of the Concordia with which we are
concerned, that he derived from it ' the parochial law of tithes,'
and that his decretal of 1210 and the subsequent canon of the
Lateran Council of 1215 were inspired by the arrangement
made before the Scottish King. This remarkable theory will
not bear examination. In the first place, Innocent was not
concerned with the merits of the Eccles case, but only with
certain specific points of Procedure and the Competence of
Evidence, and the contents of the Concordia were not before him.
In the second place, Innocent's decretal of 1210 and the Canon
of 1215 did not introduce a novelty. They simply reaffirmed a
principle which had often been disregarded in practice. In
the year 1199, seven years before his letter regarding David's
instrumentum. Innocent wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury :
' Pervenit ad audientiam nostram quod multi in dioecesi tua
decimas suas integras vel duas partes ipsarum non illis ecclesiis,
in quarum parochiis habitant, vel ubi praedia habent, et a quibus
ecclesiastica percipiunt sacramenta, persolvent, sed eas aliis pro
sua distribuunt voluntate. Cum igitur inconveniens esse videatur
et a ratione dissimile, ut Ecclesiae, quae spiritualia seminant,
metere non debeant a suis parochianis temporalia et habere,
fraternitati tuae auctoritate praesentium indulgemus ut liceat
tibi super hoc, non obst. contradictione vel appellatione cujuslibet
seu consuetudine hactenus observata, quod canonicum fuerit
ordinare et facere quod statueris per censuram ecclesias-
ticam firmiter observari ' (Migne, P.L. ccxiv. 672, cf. Selden,
Historie of Tithes (London, 1618), pp. 229-231). Innocent's pre-
decessor Pope Alexander III. clearly indicated ' the parochial
law of tithes ' in letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury and
to the Bishops of Worcester and Exeter (Decret. Alex. HI.
Tit. 34, c. i and 3).1
Turning to Scotland, we find in the Register of Kelso a
Charter by Robert, Bishop of St. Andrews, of a date between
1 Reference may also be made to Concil. Ticinense, c. 2 (a. 855), in Galante,
Fontes Juris Canonid (1906), 615 ; Decret. Greg. IX. bk. i. tit. 36, cap. 8, and ibid.
bk. iii. tit. 30, c. 4, 5, 7, 8, 13 ; Thomassinus, Fetus et nova ecclesiae disciplina,
p. iii. lib. i. cap. 9 ; Selden, op. cit. p. 283 ; Van Espen, Jus ecclesiasticutn Univer-
sum, pars ii. tit. 33, cap. 3 ; and Suarez, De virtute et statu religionis, lib. i. cap. 21.
Canon Law was to a great extent customary, and the Parochial Law of Tithes
followed the delimitation of parishes. In France the boundaries of all the
parishes were clearly defined by the end of the tenth century (Luchaire
Institutions Franfaises, Paris, 1892, p. 4) ; Decret. Graf, pars ii. causa xiii. q. i. ;
ibid, causa xvi. q. i. cap. 42 and 43 and cap. 55 ; ibid, causa 25.
c Teste Meipso ' 43
1147 and 1150, in which he confirms the grant by the Abbey
to the Church of St. Laurence at Berwick of certain tithes in
jus parochiae. The Charter concludes : ' Volo itaque ut prae-
dicta ecclesia decimas et rectitudines praefatas habeat et teneat
jure parochiali sicut aliqua elemosina liberius et quietius ab
aliqua possidetur ecclesia.'1 Again, in 1161, Pope Alexander
III. issued a mandate to the people of the diocese of Glasgow
that * ecclesiis in quarum parochiis habitatis juxta commoni-
cionem venerabilis fratis nostri Glasguensis episcopi decimas
quae de canonico jure debentur sine contradictione cum integri-
tate solvatis.'2 Reference may also be made to a number of
twelfth-century conventiones regarding the respective rights of
a Parish Church and a Chapel, in which the rights of the former
are carefully guarded,3 and to a compositio regarding tithes
between William, parson of Hunsdun, and Melrose Abbey of
1185.*
To sum up the foregoing observations :
(1) Mr. Miller has misapprehended the import of Innocent's
letter and of Edward Henryson's comments on it.
(2) He has given to the Eccles concordia a legislative or
judicial character to which it has no claim.
(3) He has propounded a theory on the Law of Parochial
Tithes which will stir the heart of every patriotic Scotsman
and make Innocent and Raymond, Thomassinus and van Espen,
and many other canonists turn in their graves.
DAVID BAIRD SMITH.
1 Liber de Calchou, No. 445.
2 Reg. Ep. Glas. No. 17; cf. Reg. de Cambuskenneth, No. 24, for analogous case
of burial dues.
*Reg. Pr. St. And. 321, 322.
^ Liber de Metros, ii. No. 129; cf. Liber de Calchou, i. No. 441. In this case
the rector's claim to the tithes was not supported, but the ground of the judgment
of the Papal delegates is not given.
The Arbuthnots of Kincardineshire and
Aberdeenshire1
MRS. ARBUTHNOT'S book is a sound piece of genea-
logical work and a valuable contribution to Scottish
family history. The author has been most painstaking and
has told her story in a perfectly plain, straightforward way
if occasionally at some considerable length. She has wisely
eschewed all attempts at fine writing and * gush,' which are too
often the bane of lady genealogists. She has indeed an in-
teresting story to tell, for few families have produced in their
course so many distinguished men.
The Kincardineshire Arbuthnotts (with two t's), now repre-
sented by the peerage family of that name, trace their descent
from a certain Hugo de Swinton who got the lands of Aber-
bothenoth (from which he assumed his ultimate name) as early
as the twelfth century. Who this Hugo was has not been
definitely ascertained, though there is little doubt that he was
closely connected with the ancient Berwickshire family of that
name. Mrs. Arbuthnot gives the pedigree from him down to the
present holder of the title, but she does not enlarge on them,
as her proper subject is really the Aberdeenshire branches of
the family, whose ancestor is supposed to have been Hugh
Arbuthnot the second son of Robert Arbuthnot of that ilk, who
died in 1450, by his wife Giles, daughter of Sir Walter Ogilvy
of Lintrathen, Lord High Treasurer of Scotland. For about
a hundred and twenty years the descent is somewhat nebulous,
and we are faced with a goodly number of * probabilities.'
But when we come to James Arbuthnot of Lentusche towards
the end of the sixteenth century we begin to be on firmer ground.
Mrs. Arbuthnot thinks there is good reason to believe that he
was the great-grandson of the above-mentioned Hugh, and
1 Memories of the Arbuthnots of Kincardineshire and Aberdeenshire. By Mrs. ?•
S.-M. Arbuthnot. Pp. 530. With 33 Illustrations and 3 Genealogical Charts.
London : George Allen & Unwin. 1920. 633. net.
The Arbuthnots 45
brother of that Alexander Arbuthnot who was the joint printer
along with Thomas Bassendyne of the Bassendyne Bible in
1579. His line, which in the person of his son John became
that of Cairngall, is now extinct, and the present day Kincardine-
shire families are supposed to descend from the father of the
laird of Lentusche, John of Legasland. And what an array of
distinguished people sprang from him ! There was the Rev.
Alexander Arbuthnot, minister of the parish of that name, an
ardent Jacobite, who was deposed from his living in 1689,
not exactly by the third Viscount as stated in the text, but by
the Privy Council, for his adherence to the Stuart cause. He
it was who wrote a continuation of a history of the family origin-
ally written in Latin by another Alexander Arbuthnot, who was
Principal of the University of Aberdeen in 1567. Both these
annalists, however, confined themselves to the senior line of the
family and did not touch the cadet branches, which are our
present author's principal care. But perhaps the minister of
Arbuthnot's chief claim to remembrance is not his family history
but the fact that he was the father of a still more eminent man
in the person of Dr. John Arbuthnot, the physician of Queen
Anne, the friend of Mrs. Masham, and a participator in most
of the political and Court intrigues of his day.
Little more than thirty years after his death another member
of the family was born who was destined to play even a greater
part in the public life of his country. This was Charles Arbuth-
not, a grandnephew of the physician. To his career more
than fifty pages of this volume is devoted, and there is much
interesting matter in it, though some of it would have been more
appropriate to a substantive biography. But our author is
naturally anxious to vindicate his name from aspersions which
have been cast on it in connection with his conduct of affairs
when he was Ambassador to the Sublime Porte. In 1807 we
had one of our periodic difficulties with Turkey, and the British
Fleet successfully forced the passage of the Dardanelles, but
having got through had the utmost difficulty in getting out
again. This is not a story into which we can enter in detail,
but the result was that Arbuthnot was recalled, and he then
abandoned diplomacy for good and devoted himself to home
politics, becoming in 1807 one °f the joint Secretaries of the
Treasury in the Duke of Portland's administration. In 1814
he married as his second wife Harriet Fane, a granddaughter
of the Earl of Westmoreland. It was she, as is well known to
46 Sir James Balfour Paul
the student of the history of the period, who was the intimate
friend and confidante of the Duke of Wellington, and after her
death in 1834 Arbuthnot was perhaps the one man who was
really intimate with the Duke, and continued his cherished and
devoted friend till the close of his own life, which took place
two years before the death of the great commander. Some
curious glimpses are given in these pages of the Duke's domestic
life. His wife was not suited to him, though she loved him
immensely. She had neither the tact nor the ability to make
the best of her distinguished position. The Duke was a hard
man with no sentiment about him, but if his wife had managed
affairs with discretion there would have been more tenderness
in the establishment than there was.
The Arbuthnot family gave many eminent men to all the
professions ; but it is curious to find that in the Church one
of its most distinguished members was a dignitary of Rome.
Charles Arbuthnot of the West Rora family was, we are told,
' brought up in the Roman Catholic faith ' (though it is not clear
why, as it is not said that his immediate family were Catholics),
and was sent abroad for his education at an early age. He
entered the Benedictine Order and became famous as a scientist,
mathematician and chemist rather than as an ecclesiastic. He
was, however, in 1776 appointed Abbot of St. James's Monas-
tery, Ratisbon. He was perhaps rather a mundane Abbot ;
besides his scientific eminence he distinguished himself by ' his
remarkable skill at all games of cards, principally at Ombre, at
which he is very fortunate.' We are also told by one of his
relatives who visited him that he went every evening to the
Assemblies or to the Opera, and that if St. Benedict were to
come alive he would be rather surprised to see so gay an Abbot.
He was a very handsome man, of charming manners, and Thomas
Campbell the poet, who visited him on one occasion, described
him as the most commanding human figure he had ever seen.
Not the most distinguished but one of the pleasantest figures
which meet us in this gallery is that of Robert Arbuthnot of
Haddo Rattray, who began life as a merchant in Peterhead, but
came to Edinburgh, where he established a banking business,
which was, however, not successful. He then obtained the post
of Secretary to the Board of Trustees, an office which he held
till his death in 1803. He was a man of strong literary tastes,
and on that account was thought worthy by Boswell of an
introduction to Dr. Johnson ; he was, too, an intimate friend
The Arbuthnots 47
of the poet Beattie. Being socially inclined he was very popular
in Edinburgh society. One of his sons, William, became in
time Lord Provost of that city, and had the honour of being
created a Baronet by George IV. on the occasion of the great
banquet to that monarch in the Parliament House during the
royal visit in 1822. And it was the great-grandson of the Lord
Provost who nobly crowned a brilliant naval career, meeting, as
Admiral Sir Robert Keith Arbuthnot, his death in the defence
of his country at the battle of Jutland in 1916.
We have seen that one member of the family failed to succeed
in the business of banking. It was given to another to show
his outstanding ability in this line. George Arbuthnot, a younger
brother of the Lord Provost, began his career as Deputy Secre-
tary to the Government of Ceylon in 1801, but he resigned this
appointment the following year and entered the house of Lautour
& Co., bankers in Madras. He ultimately became the head of
the firm, realising a large fortune, and altering its name to that
of Arbuthnot & Co., the beginning of that great and long
honoured banking house which for a century exercised a powerful
influence in the mercantile community of the East till its dis-
astrous end in 1 906, long after the control of the business had
passed from the hands of his direct descendants. He retired
from business in 1823, came home and purchased the estate
of Elderslie in Surrey, where he lived to the close of a long and
honoured life, dying in 1 843.
To the strange adventures of one of his daughters, Eleanor,
Mrs. Arbuthnot devoted much space, and certainly tells an
extraordinarily out-of-the-way and interesting story. She met
in Ireland when a girl of eighteen a Mr. John Carden of Barnane
Castle, Tipperary, a man of means and an eligible enough parti
for her except in the matter of age, as he was forty-three. He
became madly infatuated about her, and though she gave
him no encouragement whatever he persisted in paying her
attention and was never happy out of her presence. The story
is a long one and cannot be related here. Suffice it to say that
it ultimately ended in his attempting to abduct her, for which
proceeding he was tried and sentenced to two years' imprison-
ment. After his release on the expiration of the term of his
sentence he continued for years to follow her about the country,
much to her distress and alarm, for there is little doubt that the
poor man's mind had become unhinged. In the long run, how-
ever, she managed to get rid of him for good. He died, the
48 The Arbuthnots
victim of unrequited love, in 1866, and his adored Eleanor sur-
vived him for nearly thirty years, dying unmarried in Ireland
in 1894. She was for some years before that well known in
Edinburgh, where she spent part of her later life.
It will be seen that besides mere genealogical facts there is
a great deal of interesting matter in this book, and Mrs. Arbuth-
not has executed her task of authorship modestly and well. It
is a pleasure in these days to see a volume printed in such large
and legible type, and with so many excellent illustrations.
There are some useful pedigree charts which might have been
fuller if they had been distributed throughout the book in
detachments. There is an admirable index.
J. BALFOUR PAUL.
Reviews of Books
CHAPTERS IN THE ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY OF MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND :
THE WARDROBE, THE CHAMBER, AND THE SMALL SEALS. By T. F.
Tout, Professor of History and Director of Advanced Study in History.
Vols. I. and II. Pp. xxiv, 317; xvi, 364. London: Longmans,
Green & Co. 1920. 365. net.
THE late Sir John Seeley, clothing old theories in new garments, empha-
sized the need for two separate constitutional machines in a free country —
the governing organ and the government-controlling organ. In the
Great Britain of to-day the first of these is to be found in the machinery
of which the monarchy is the centre, including King, Cabinet and
administrative departments, the latter is to be found in Parliament.
Professor Tout here maintains that the great hierarchy of English
historians, from the venerated Bishop Stubbs onwards, have been at fault in
overestimating the value of one of these factors in comparison with the
other. His main proposition is that Parliamentary control has been
exalted to the comparative neglect of the administrative mechanism upon
which efficiency depends. Dr. Tout has accordingly set himself, as a
supplement to his already weighty contribution to historical science, to
redress the balance, and he is carrying through his task with characteristic
energy and thoroughness. His main positions have been already outlined
in a treatise entitled The Place of Edward 11. in English History, published
by him some two years ago. The present two volumes form the first half
of a work intended to establish his thesis by an exhaustive examination of
the vast amount of available evidence.
The clue that guides him through many labyrinths is the well-known
principle of bifurcation, in accord with which every department of the
central government of medieval England tended to split into two or more.
As the exchequer became separate from the treasury, so the wardrobe from
the king's chamber. Within the wardrobe a second treasury developed,
distinct from the treasury of the exchequer, and at first subordinate to the
older one, but tending in periods of royal ascendancy to usurp the premier
position, while preserving comparative immunity from baronial or other
control by professing to be still a department of the king's domestic
economy rather than an office of state. Finally, this wardrobe became in
fact, in Dr. Tout's own words, ' the War Office and the Admiralty, as
rell as the Treasury and the Ministry of Munitions.' In resolving a net-
work of allied problems much aid is found from a skilful comparison
:tween the various royal seals in use at different periods.
D
50 Tout : History of Mediaeval England
As to all such points of detail Professor Tout's own lucid pages may
safely be left to speak for themselves. As to the value of his contribution
to constitutional history as a whole it would be premature to speak until he
has concluded his researches. It is likely that there will be differences
of opinion as to the extent to which the new light thrown by him will
demand a restatement of fundamental principles ; as to how far, for
example, it may be necessary to abandon the sharp distinction traditionally
drawn between the English system of parliamentary control and the
bureaucratic methods adopted by the centralised governments of conti-
nental Europe, notably by France, where the central administrative
machinery proved strong enough to outlive a series of parliamentary con-
stitutions and the revolutions that divided them. Be this as it may,
fellow-workers, while they differ, can hardly fail to realise the great value
of Dr. Tout's researches. Not only do these afford a view of English
constitutional progress from a new angle of observation, but they throw a
flood of light on numerous dark places. Future historians of all schools
will find here materials wherewith to test or fortify their own conclusions.
Picturesque details of the domestic life of kings of England lighten the
technical nature of the main discussion. For example, the man who
carried King John's bed had his meals in the royal household, while that
monarch was entitled to three baths a year without extra payment to his
officials, but each additional tub cost him twopence farthing to the water-
bearer. (He profited from this source to the extent of 4|d. for the period
between loth April and 3rd August, 1212 !) Historians of Scots law will
read with surprise the unqualified statement that in Western Europe 'the
notarial system had only a late and occasional vogue,' but they have them-
selves to blame that Scottish institutions are not brought more prominently
within the ken of English and continental writers on * Western Europe ' ;
the constitution of Scotland, considered as a whole, has still to wait for its
historian.
Not the least pleasant feature of these volumes is the frequent acknow-
ledgement of help received from pupils of the author's own training. The
creation, by him and his able colleagues, of a school of history at Manchester
that challenges in friendly rivalry the Oxford School of Modern History
itself is no mean achievement. WM S McKECHNiE.
DUPLEIX AND CLIVE : THE BEGINNING OF EMPIRE. By Henry Dodwell,
M.A. (Oxon), F.R. Hist. Soc., Curator of the Madras Record Office.
8vo. London : Methuen & Co. Ltd. 1920.
MODERN research has, perhaps more frequently than its devotees would be
inclined to admit, the task of re-adjusting historical perspective rather than
the opportunity of reversing accepted judgments. Mr. Dodwell, however,
has some claim to do both. His book is a work of genuine research, and
not only does he soften and tone down the violent colours and contrasts
and incidentally expunge some of the picturesque details of the authorised
version of British Indian history — * Dupleixfatehabad,' for example,
the c City of the Victory of Dupleix,' dwindles down to an insignificant
hamlet where no arrogant monument ever commemorated the conquests
Dodwell : Dupleix and Clive 51
of the would-be French empire builder ; but positive errors in statement
of fact and opinion are freely corrected by his careful and accurate study of
contemporary evidence.
Mr. Dodwell has used the original records of the East India Company,
both those in his own care and those at the India Office, and the French
archives at Pondichery and in the Ministry of Colonial Affairs in Paris, and
has based on them a really authoritative narrative of the first great contest
between the rival nations in India. From this narrative, unquestionably better
informed than its predecessors, Dupleix emerges shorn of some of his laurels
— less of a political superman, and very much more credible in consequence.
Certainly his policy, had it succeeded, would have revolutionised the posi-
tion of the French Company in India : certainly it supplied both a model
and a warning to British administrators and did revolutionise the position
of the English company because in their hands it did succeed. But
Dupleix's ambition to secure political control over native princes as well
as commercial concessions from them grew slowly : the system he built up
in the Carnatic and Deccan, in Mr. Dod well's words, was * the result of
circumstances rather than the fruit of meditation.' Under the circum-
stances, any European might have built it : indeed the Dutch in Java already
conducted their affairs on much the same lines : and the French policy was
neither a novelty, nor even a scheme deliberately adopted and consistently
followed with all its significance and consequences appreciated and foreseen.
Nor was it simply the short-sighted refusal of support from home that
caused Dupleix's failure. The French Company certainly preferred good
dividends to the establishment of an Indian Empire, and, like its English
rival, did not desire political domination for its own sake. But it was not
slow to see that commercial gain would follow political domination.
Unfortunately for Dupleix, he could not make his wars pay for themselves,
though that feat has been claimed for him. The exploits into which his
alliances with native states and princes led him made large inroads upon
the Company's revenues. Still the Company gave him, Mr. Dodwell con-
siders, as much support as the English Company gave his enemies. It sent
him more European recruits, no worse in quality than those of the English,
whose superiority Mr. Dodwell attributes to better leading and the more
rigid discipline Stringer Lawrence imposed on subordinate officers and
men. It was the impossibility of financing in the Carnatic and the Deccan,
comparatively poor and barren territories, such ambitious schemes as Dupleix
gradually evolved that was the real cause of his ultimate failure. And, as
M. Prosper Cultru has pointed out, it was not the French Company which
recalled him but the French Ministry, which did not even communicate its
decision to the Directors of the Company. (Mr. Dodwell, by the way, has
two contradictory statements on this point — in his introduction, p. xvi,
and on p. 77. The first is no doubt a slip of the pen.)
The second part of Mr. Dodwell's work is an excellent account of
the later campaigns in the Carnatic of Lally and Bussy (whom Mr.
Dodwell describes as an abler man than Dupleix) and of Clive's great work
i Bengal. Mr. Dodwell touches very briefly on such matters as the famous
brged treaty with Omichand, but of Clive's administrative genius he
D 2
52 Deanesly : The Lollard Bible
speaks in an unwonted strain of enthusiasm. Indeed, his enthusiasm is
well justified. Recognition of what is practically possible and foresight of
what will ultimately become desirable are marks of the real statesman ;
and dive's political settlement during his second term of power in 1765-67,
based on the first, yet so infused with the second that the one has never
impeded the other, shows how eminently he possessed the rare combination
of the two qualities.
There is one serious fault in Mr. Dodwell's book. It is totally
deficient in maps ; and intelligently to follow his closely knit narra-
tive, bristling with Oriental place-names, from large states to tiny villages,
is quite impossible without maps. Although one could hardly expect
the book to be furnished with plans on the scale of a large atlas, it certainly
should supply the reader with good maps of Deccan and Bengal, and
perhaps one of the Carnatic on a larger scale, to enable him to appreciate
Mr. Dodwell's work at its full value. j \\r WILLIAMS.
THE LOLLARD BIBLE AND OTHER MEDIEVAL BIBLICAL VERSIONS. By
Margaret Deanesly, M.A. Pp. xx, 483. 8vo. (Cambridge Studies in
Medieval Life and Thought.) Cambridge: University Press. 1920.
31$. 6d. net.
THIS is a work of sound scholarship, embodying a great deal of original
research, and Miss Deanesly is to be heartily congratulated on her achieve-
ment. Written in a critical spirit equally far removed from the extremes
of partiality and prejudice, the book is undoubtedly a valuable contribution
to medieval history. Such definite results could only have been obtained as
a result of great industry. One small section of the book alone, that con-
cerning bequests of Bibles in medieval wills, involved the examination of
over 7500 documents.
The subject has a much wider scope than might at first appear. The
unity of the medieval church depended in no slight measure on the
recognition of the Vulgate as the only authentic text, and at the same time
on the exclusive right of the clergy to interpret the Bible. As soon as the
general public had access to translations in the vernacular, ecclesiastical
unity was imperilled. In Miss Deanesly 's opinion it was only the exercise
of force that prevented the Reformation from coming in the thirteenth and
not in the sixteenth century. This is quite likely ; at the same time the
Reformation would have been a very different movement without the added
impulse of humanism.
In the Middle Ages the church did not invariably prohibit translations of
the Bible into the vernacular. In the early ages of missionary effort such
renderings were necessary. They were however made for the use of the
clergy. In later times laymen were occasionally allowed to have copies of
vernacular Bibles, but this permission depended on a Bishop's licence in the
case of Great Britain, and the licence was only granted to persons of
distinction. An unused book in a royal library was of no benefit what-
ever to the general public. As time went on, translations of the scriptures
were more and more associated with heresy because the individual laymen
began to claim the right to interpret holy writ in his own way.
Vallance : Old Crosses and Lychgates 53
To a certain extent the development on the Continent and in Britain
followed similar lines. The vernacular Bible was a weapon in the hands
of the Waldensians of Lombardy, France, and the Empire, just as was the
case with the English Lollards. The translation of the Bible was not at
first among the objects which Wycliffe strove to accomplish, but towards
the close of his life he considered it a necessary step for the achievement
of his aims. The translation of the Vulgate is not even mentioned among
the heresies for which he was condemned, although it was the logical out-
come of those heresies.
Miss Deanesly has convincingly shown, and here lies one of the chief
merits of her book, that the reference in Sir Thomas More's Dialogue to
old English Bibles in the possession of the laity must refer to Wycliffite
text without the heretical prologue. No complete Middle English version
existed before Wycliffe, and even the partial versions were most likely all
written after 1380.
Two minor points may be noted. The statement (p. 140) : * It is claimed
that a written version of the songs of Caedmon exists in a manuscript,
which contains the story of Genesis, Exodus and Daniel,' is substantially
correct, but its brevity may be misleading. The Anglo-Saxon Exodus has
many archaisms in phonology and syntax which point to an Anglian
original of early date, which may be as far back as Caedmon's time. The
Genesis and Daniel are much later, and the interpolated Genesis B is a
translation from the Old Saxon, and hence has nothing to do with
Caedmon.1 The discussion of the different dialects of Wycliffite scribes
(p. 253) is not quite convincing. The form of the participle is a use-
ful dialect test, although other evidence should be added. But — * and ' is
not Midland ; it is Northern. Nor is ' heo ' (presumably the nom. sing,
fem. of the personal pronoun) necessarily Southern. It might just as well
point to a Lancashire dialect. ' Yspoken' may be Southern, but it may also
be Midland.
The carefully edited text of various Lollard tracts in the second Appendix
is of considerable interest for students of Middle English.
JAMES M. CLARK.
OLD CROSSES AND LYCHGATES. By Aymer Vallance. Pp. xviii, 198.
With 237 Illustrations. Small Quarto. London : B. T. Batsford, Ltd.
1920. 1 8s. net.
ORIGINATING in an art magazine article, this beautiful volume derives more
from its artistic than its antiquarian suggestions. It is nothing short of an
album of crosses and lychgates, comprehending the finest examples in
England and exhibiting a great variety of skilful drawings and photographs
of recent execution as well as reproductions of old pictures of objects no
longer existing or now modified by the wear and tear of time or trans-
mogrified by restoration.
As a repertory of crosses the collection may claim a creditable place, and
its discussions of antiquarian theory and its particular descriptions are
1 Paul's Grundr'us der germ anise hen Philologie, ii. 1028, Strassburg, 1909.
54 Gray : Royal Burgh of Rutherglen
neither marred by eccentricity nor by dogmatism. Probably the specialist
may feel that the vitals of the problems are not always seized, and that
scientific archaeology only slips in and out between and among these
wonderful old pillars and sockets and fragments of a cult which had its day
but has not therefore ceased to be.
There are 199 crosses pictured and 38 lychgates. Particularly happy
examples may be referred to, from the author's own camera, viz. the slender
and graceful cross of St. Donat Glamorgan and the sombre pillar at Derwen in
Denbighshire. The Eleanor crosses in memory of the queen of Edward I.
naturally receive special attention, both in picture and in text, that of
Geddington being a choice example, while armorial fragments from the
Cheapside monument do honour to Plantagenet sculpture. In a brief intro-
duction, what may be called the story of the cross as a medieval emblem in
stone is sketched and its varieties of type distinguished, especially Palm
crosses, Boundary crosses, Sanctuary crosses and Market crosses. Neville's
cross at Durham, scene of a Scottish disaster in 1346, has disappeared,
thanks to 'some lewd and contemptuous wicked persons' who in 1589
broke it down. Its characteristics, however, are well described in the Rites
of Durham, written in 1 593. A moderately good account is given of the
Preaching crosses, especially that of St. Paul's, from which so often political
as well as religious echoes resounded through the land. The space avail-
able for archaeological disquisition, no doubt, was inadequate to allow a
more detailed historical statement on such subjects as the Northumbrian
crosses and the documentary side of the memorials of Oueen Eleanor.
The author deplores, as well he may, the premature loss of his friend Sir
W. St. John Hope, whose promised notes on the Eleanor crosses would
have been an invaluable accession of archaeological interest. To many the
substantial chapter on Market crosses will be notable for its tendency to
exhibit a gradual development of an octagonal or circular type, arched and
roofed and usually pinnacled. Comparison with Mr. John W. Small's
drawings in his Scottish Market Crosses affords room for reflection not
always to the discredit of our less ornate ideals. In the matter of the lych-
gate or covered gateway into the churchyard, of which such rich examples
in timber as well as in stone are here presented, Scotland could scarcely
enter the lists of comparison at all.
Mr. Aymer Vallance's volume will be found excellent for reference to
typical English architectural modes and forms as well as for its tribute to
picturesque phases of antiquity. QEQ NEILSON.
THE EARLY CHARTERS OF THE ROYAL BURGH OF RUTHERGLEN, A.D.
1126-1388. Introduction, Translation and Notes. By George Gray
Town Clerk. Pp. 31. Crown 8vo. 1920.
THIS modest pamphlet prints the charter of William the Lion ante 1189,
that of Alexander II. in 1226, that of Robert the Bruce in 1323, and that
of Robert II. in 1388, with a capital facsimile of the charter of 1323 and a
map exhibiting the extensive bounds within which the burghal liberties
were confirmed by that charter. This facsimile would alone make the
print notable, for the document counts among the high vouchers of the
Bell : Hellenic Architecture 55
generic Scottish burghal constitution. The editor deserves all the heartier
and more grateful welcome into the historical field, as his father George
Gray primus^ town clerk before him, was an honoured student of burghs,
and, like his son, a watchful guardian of the privileges of Rutherglen.
The arrangement of preface and documents notwithstanding leaves some-
thing to be desired, and the discussion of the characteristics of the charters
rather tantalises the enquirer, e.g. (i) as to the precise relationship with
Glasgow, Partick, Renfrew and Ayr ; (2) as to the connection with the
county of Lanark ; and (3) as to the precise constitution of the ' castellany '
embracing the rural area dependent on the castle and defining the limits of
the burgh's exclusive privilege. In the translation of William the Lion's
charter a critic might demur to ' Provost ' as a dubious and premature
rendering of a twelfth century prepositus. Moreover, it rather seems that
ubicunque . . . attingere possit in cujuscunque terra relates to the catching of an
offender * anywhere in another jurisdiction,' and that Mr. Gray's 'other
rights wheresoever' can hardly be the connotation of ubicunque where it
occurs. However, these are details perhaps for the next parliamentary com-
mittee to determine. The extract from the proceedings of 1912 is an
obviously relevant reminiscence of the triumph of Rutherglen.
HELLENIC ARCHITECTURE : ITS GENESIS AND GROWTH. By Edward Bell,
M.A., F.S.A. Pp. xx, 185. Illustrated. London : G. Bell & Sons,
Ltd. 1920. ys. 6d. net (in paper wrapper, 6s. net).
MR. BELL practically confines himself to a description of Cretan and
Mycenean architecture and of the Doric and Ionic temples, and a discus-
sion of the origin of the three orders. This task he has very well carried
out. His style is easy, pleasantly technical and very lucid ; and the book
is generously illustrated. He rightly rejects the idea that the Doric order
is a close translation into stone of an older timber construction, and insists
on the probability of Egyptian influence on the formation of the early Doric
column. For it is one of the puzzles of the history of Greek architecture
that the slender Mycenean wooden column seems to have been replaced
by the remarkably thick stone columns of the Doric temples. Mr. Bell
does not give any idea of what a Greek town looked like. Nor does he
explain the Greek conception of art — why they showed such little variety
in the general type of the temples, but were always aiming at the perfec-
tion of certain forms which they thought beautiful ; though he hints at it
in this admirable sentence : * The Doric capital by successive experiments
was refined in profile and reduced in diameter until it attained that appro-
priate and satisfactory relation to the whole column which is shown in
the most perfect examples of the order' (p. 121). One misses, in fact, a
description of the Acropolis as a whole. The temple of Poseidon at
Sunium has been more recently studied than 1900 (p. 107); references
should be made to the Ephemeris Archaiologike of 1911 and following
years. Both the treasuries of Knidos and of Siphnos at Delphi had caryatid
porches. But these are small blemishes in this well-written book, which,
within the limits indicated, gives a very clear account of the growth of
Greek architecture. A w QOMME.
56 Meyer : Staatstheorien Papst Innocenz' III.
STAATSTHEORIEN PAPST INNOCENZ' III. Von Dr. Erich W. Meyer.
Pp. 50. 8vo. (Jenaer Historische Arbeiten, Heft 9.) Bonn : A.
Marcus und E. Webers Verlag. 1919.
DR. MEYER'S original intention was to deal with Innocent Ill's political
theories and their application in practice. He found himself however
obliged to limit the scope of his investigations to the political system of this
Pope, which is, after all, the most important aspect of the subject, —
Innocent Ill's practical policy being in the main an adaptation of his theory.
Recent judgments of Pope Innocent III have been rather unfavourable.
Hauck declared in his Kirchengeschichte that he was an opportunist who
knew no scruples, who often descended to deceit and hypocrisy in order to
achieve his ends, who did not shrink from deliberate lying or the falsifica-
tion of facts. Dr. Meyer makes no attempt to rehabilitate Innocent III,
but does not judge him quite so harshly, apparently because he considers
that politics have no connection with morality. He sees in this pontiff an
aggressive potentate who had no ideal mission. He comes to this con-
clusion after studying Innocent's letters, which are the chief source of our
knowledge.
The monograph is admirable for its clearness and conciseness. There is
nothing superfluous in it, but simply a well arranged statement amply
supported by quotations. Granted Dr. Meyers conception of Innocent
Ill's character it is impossible not to accept his conclusions. Where we
may possibly differ from him is in the first principles.
JAMES M. CLARK.
Mr. Arnold D. M'Nair modestly describes his scholarly and useful book,
Essays and Lectures upon Some Legal Effects of War (pp. xiv, 1 68 ; 8vo.
Cambridge University Press. 1920. IDS. 6d. net) as *a collection of
seven essays and lectures upon several aspects of the Effect of War upon
the municipal or national law of England.' Some of his readers might
have expected him rather to describe his book as a treatise on the principles
of private international law as interpreted by the English law courts in the
period of the world war. It is an admirable piece of work, at once
scholarly and practical, exhaustive and well arranged, well reasoned and
clearly expressed. It may be recommended with confidence to all who are
in need of guidance on a thorny and important subject.
WM. S. McKECHNIE.
NEGRO MIGRATION DURING THE WAR. By Emmett J. Scott. Pp. viii,
192. Crown 410. With one Map. Oxford: University Press, 1920.
I dollar.
NEGRO migrations from the South take place at intervals. One, which com-
prised thousands, moved to Kansas in 1879, another to Arkansas and Texas
in 1888-89, but this work deals with the three years following 1914 when
more than four thousand negroes suddenly went northward. This mono-
graph deals with the facts of the migration, its effects on the labour question
both in the South, North, Middle West and East, the public opinion on the
movement, and gives an extensive bibliography to illustrate this newer
portion of the great negro problem.
Campbell : Caithness and Sutherland 57
CAITHNESS AND SUTHERLAND. By H. F. Campbell, M.A. Pp. x 168.
Crown 8vo. With 68 Illustrations and Maps. Cambridge : at the
University Press. 1920. 45. 6d.
A MIXTURE of Picts and Scots, to the last of whom their Christianity was
due, occupied Caithness until the ninth century when the Norse filtered in.
This book gives, as illustrations of the periods, different brooches which vie
with each other. As in most other countries, the Gaels were forced back to
the less fertile uplands, while the Norse retained the coasts and grew rich
on the corn trade with Norway. In 1150 King David formed the country
north of Dornoch into a bishopric, but the early bishops had tragic ends.
The country was the scene of the battle of Altimarlach in 1 680 between
the native Sinclairs and the invading Campbells, and since then matters
have been quiet and agricultural. Sutherland, on the other hand, though
the name is Norse, is much more Celtic by blood. Continual migrations
of Highland clans have made it so. The Mackays arrived early, Murrays
later, and Gordons last, and it was through one of those — Sir Robert — that
in 1631 Charles I. erected the present county out of that of Inverness.
We are given everything we can desire to know about the occupations of
the inhabitants, agriculture, fishing and other industries, and enough is said
of the antiquities (which are many) of both counties and of the communi-
cations to allow the traveller to arrive at their northern locality.
KIRKCUDBRIGHTSHIRE AND WIGTOWNSHIRE. By Wm. Learmonth,
F.R.G.S. Pp. 149. Crown 8vo. With 62 Illustrations and Maps.
Cambridge: at the University Press. 1920. 45. 6d.
THIS volume runs on the same lines as the last and is equally successful.
We have the same well-chosen illustrations and the same good physical
descriptions. The Norse element of the northern countries does not exist
so much here though the Northmen conquered Galloway from North-
umbria. The people of the country and stewartry were Gaels, and spoke
Gaelic until well on into the sixteenth century, and had become Christian
since the time of S. Ninian. Fierce and turbulent, Galloway followed its
overlords the Balliols and the Douglases. The Reformation took a great
hold, and later the Covenanters. The antiquities include the Deil's Dyke
— a rampart of defence from the north — and the crosses of Kirkmadrine,
perhaps the earliest Christian monuments in Scotland. These are included
in the illustrations, as are * Candida Casa ' and Dundrennan Abbey, founded
by Devorgilla Balliol and known as 'Dulce Cor.' Threave Castle, the
centre of a storm-tossed past, also figures among the Military Antiquities.
There is the same care to instruct the tourist in all ways as in the last book,
and the writer has done well. A. F. S.
Two CENTURIES OF LIFE IN DOWN, 1600-1800. By John Stevenson,
Belfast. Pp. viii, 508. 8vo. With 46 Illustrations. McCaw,
Stevenson & Orr, Ltd. 1920. 2is. net.
THIS volume is evidently a successful labour of love. The latter part of
this book deals with the kirk, education, letters and doings in Down,
much of it connected with descendants in the female line of the Hamilton
58 Jastrow : The Eastern Question
family, who with the Montgomerys are dealt with in the first few chapters
Brian McFelim O'Neill, Chief of Southern Claneboye, was knighted in
1567 by Queen Elizabeth, yet she granted his lands to Sir Thomas Smith
four years afterwards that the people * might be taught some civility.' A
later O'Neill — Con — made a grant of part of his lands to Hugh Mont-
gomery of Braidstone, having fallen into disfavour with James L, but later
Montgomery, by the King's action, had to divide his newly gained Irish lands
with Sir James Hamilton, son of the minister of Dunlop, who was made
Viscount Claneboye in 1622. The other adventurer became Viscount
Montgomery of the Ards, and his descendants Earls of Mount- Alexander.
These great pioneers were followed by many settlers both English and
Scots. * Generally the scum of both nations, who for debt, or breaking or
fleeing from justice . . . came hither, hoping to be without fear of man's
notice in a land where there was nothing, or but little, as yet, of the fear of
God.' Yet both the lesser and the greater settlers flourished, and we are
told much of interest about the turbulent but useful lives of the latter in
this book, where information drawn from MSS. of all kinds is put together
in a form useful to historians. A. F. S.
THE EASTERN QUESTION AND ITS SOLUTION. By Morris Jastrow, Jun.
Pp. iv, 160. Crown 8vo. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. 1920. 6s.
THE writer is trying his hand again, but his spirit of prophecy is growing
fainter. He appeals more to American than to European readers on his views
of the Eastern question. He makes the statement, ' If the world continues
to be in a disturbed and restless condition, we will suffer along with Euro-
pean nations.' Yet he only thinks that American help to the East ought
not to be refused if.it can be given * without an army of occupation ' or * the
danger of entangling alliances.' With these provisos we refer the
reader, as he does, to the last chapter of his book.
GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. A Critical Review of their
Historical Relations. By J. Travis Mills. 8vo. Pp. 68. Milford,
Oxford University Press. 1920. 2s. 6d. net.
TOUCHED with a welcome liveliness this sketch of the political relation-
ships between the two great English-speaking federations of the world
from the assertion of American independence down to the League of
Nations excellently surveys the movement of the international forces of
concord and discord for a century and a half. Perhaps it least satisfies from
its deficient interpretation of the basic feeling, for instance, of the American
colonist before the Revolution or of the Federalists of the Civil War
towards the old country. One hardly gathers how Mr. Mills reads the
settled mind of America towards our island. But evidently he regards the
Monroe doctrine as finely compatible with fairplay in the world.
THE COLUMBIAN TRADITION ON THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA AND OF
THE PART PLAYED THEREIN BY THE ASTRONOMER TOSCANELLI. By
Henry Vignaud. 8vo. Pp. 92. Oxford : Clarendon Press. 1920.
35. 6d. net.
THE voyage of Columbus has now perhaps a bigger mass of myth and
disputation around it than that of Jason. Mr. Vignaud disbelieves the
Tout : Mediaeval Forgers and Forgeries 59
statement of Columbus that the 1492 expedition was in quest of a new
route to the East Indies, and he assails the * legend ' of Toscanelli being
the instigator, and declares spurious the documents attributed to him. A
critic, not specialist on the question, may confess that to his view the attack
quite fails.
MEDIAEVAL FORGERS AND FORGERIES. By T. F. Tout. Demy 8vo.
Pp. 31. Manchester: University Press. 1920. is.
REPRINTED from the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, this essay
throws much fresh light on the origins of forgery, the methods by which
it worked its way from charters into chronicles and decretals, its slow
recognition as a crime, and its ramifications through the Middle Ages not
terminating when Charles Bertram hoodwinked the antiquaries with
' Richard of Cirencester de Situ Britanniae.' Professor Tout's light and
humorous narrative clothes a very solid collection of fact. Perhaps a grate-
ful reviewer might refer the professor to the Summa Angelica of Angelus de
Clavasio, under the word faharius, for four packed columns of medieval
juridical discussion.
THE ART OF POETRY. Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University
of Oxford, 5th June, 1920. By William Paton Ker. Crown 8vo.
Pp. 20. Oxford : Clarendon Press.
A CRITIC who has studied the art of poetry all his life can scarcely be
expected to give a simple exposition of it when he speaks to us from the
Chair of Poetry at Oxford. He is a difficult interpreter sometimes ; this
time more difficult than ever, but the grievance against the obscurity of
oracles is old. And the reasons for obscurity are not new. Beginning
with a stately passage out of Drummond somewhat objecting to reform in
Poesie, Professor Ker steps forward to explain the mysterious power of
certain formulas, abstract relations of syllables, the abstract frame of
harmony in noble thought. He finds the spirit of poetry in Gavin
Douglas's fine phrase ' plesance and half wonder.' He seems to prefer the
miracles, * such as Burns did,' in bringing new and fresh things out of old
fashions, rather than violent inventions of form. It is a doctrine with
which only a very young generation of poets is likely to quarrel. The
oracle will be accepted as not only true but imperative in these most
shrewd and wise beginnings of Professor Ker's latest and highest function.
To the series of county handbooks issued by the Cambridge University
Press there are now added Dumbartonshire, by F. Mort (pp. viii, 158,.
45. 6d. net), and Orkney and Shetland, by J. G. F. Moodie Heddle and T.
Mainland (pp. xii, 170, 43. 6d. net). A natural diversity of interest
among the authors agreeably distributes the emphasis, throwing it on
geological and physical geography in the case of Dumbartonshire, on the
Norse history and antiquities of Orkney and on the fishing and bird-life of
"Shetland. Mr. Mort quotes Blind Harry as if he were historically credible
ind he accepts * Wallace's great two-handed sword ' as the patriot's
genuine weapon. The Macgregors will not think that their side of the
has justice done to it. The unusual constitutional interest of the
60 Current Literature
formation of the county has escaped attention, and the significance of ' the
Murragh ' in that connection might well have appealed to Mr. Mort.
One wonders on what authority it is said that 'as early as 1 170 ' Kirkintil-
loch was made a burgh of barony.
In the Orkney and Shetland book Mr. Heddle takes the former group of
islands for his province and Mr. Mainland takes the northern group. Mr.
Heddle is a specialist, and his chapters on natural history and on history and
antiquities compress much observation and study. Norse speech, he tells us,
lingered until 1750. One topographical feature which has for some years
aroused attention has unfortunately not been taken up: it is the relation-
ship by way of journey in early times between Orkney and the mainland
of Scotland. A law paper of the eighteenth century reveals the fact that
* John o' Groat's ' was the house of the ferryman to the Orkneys. This
explains much and accounts for the fame of the familiar but tiny place
known more or less to every schoolboy or girl who has to learn Scottish
geography. This fame it has plainly because of its vital position on the
line of the great northern highway to Ultima Thule, wherever that was.
The ferry was, of course, a normal part of the ancient roads. What was
the Orkney end of it ? And what was its continuation to Shetland ? A
historical term of abuse, the ' ferry-loupe rs ' (applied to Scots intruders),
illustrates the important part the ferry played in Orcadian life.
Dealing with Shetland, Mr. Mainland might have made more of the
whale fishery and its customary lore. History fares less satisfactorily here
than in Orkney, but special notes on Norse words and on the wild life of
these remote isles make up for some historical shortage. The picture of a
shoal of whales is most impressive, but the maps — both of Shetland and
of Orkney — would admit of improvement in distinctness.
The Western Towers of Glasgow Cathedral, by J. Jeffrey Waddell (410,
pp. 8) is a reprint from the Scottish Ecclesiological Society's Transac-
tions. It deplores the removal of the towers in 1846 and 1848 : and Mr.
Waddell has the courage to propose their re-erection as a war memorial.
A recent Bulletin (History and Political Science) of Queen's University,
Kingston, Canada, John Morley : a Study in Victorianism, is a fine essay by
Professor John L. Morison. No such glowing paper has appeared in the
series to which it belongs. The Victorian Morley gets his meed, perhaps
with something over, and the appreciation illustrates the influence which his
high and distant spirit exercised over the generation which felt him at his
prime. Striking things in the estimate are (i) the admirably drawn contrast
between Morley and Arnold, (2) the sketch of Morley 's transition through
journalism to high politics, and (3) the poised judgments upon Gladstones
Life as compared with the Reminiscences. The view perhaps leans too
greatly to the favour of the former. Some critics may prefer to see in the
latter the last and greatest word of Morley — a consummately ambitious
literary performance, singularly combined with an unexpected proconsular
revelation not too welcome.
The latest issue of the Bulletin is Elizabethan Society : a Sketchy by J. B.
Black. It is a clever composite picture of the period, deducing its mentality
Current Literature 61
from contemporary authors. The inference, however, of a 'callous and
cruel heart ' and of an ' unprincipled scramble for wealth ' is most likely no
truer than similar generalisations would be to-day. Professor Black, whose
sojourn in Canada has been short, writes with a marked culture of the art
of expression, and bids fair to achieve a style. This essay garners many
quotations round which its propositions crystallise.
Two of the * University of Illinois Studies ' have reached us. One is
The History of Cumulative Fating and Minority Representation in Illinois
(University of Illinois, Urbana ; 8vo, pp. 71), in which Dr. Blaine F.
Moore claims that the cumulative method in practically all cases secures
minority and even proportional representation, although admitting that
when parties are closely balanced party initiative tends to be crippled.
The other is Dr. J. W. Lloyd's Co-operative and other Organized Methods
of Marketing California Horticultural Products (ibid. pp. 142), which states
and examines the conditions of the fruit trade in all aspects.
The July issue of the English Historical Review excels in variety. It
opens with an important constructive paper by the editor, Dr. R. L. Poole,
on the ' Masters of the Schools at Paris and Chartres in John of Salisbury's
Time.' This is a biographical commentary on this author's Metalogicusy
written towards 1160, in which his studies in France are described. The
most interesting feature of the article is its examination of the Metamor-
phosis Goliae Episcopiy describing a group of doctors in divinity, philosophy
and rhetoric circa 1142. William Miller discusses the Venetian Revival
in Greece in the stand against the Turk, 1648-1718.
G. Davies returns to an old problem, namely, that of James Macpherson
and the papers of David Nairne. In 1896 Col. Arthur Parnell submitted
reasons for his belief that Macpherson had forged certain of those papers to
discredit the loyalty of Marlborough. The re-examination of the question
(one is glad to note, without prejudice to Ossian) results in a thoroughgoing
vindication of Macpherson's honesty. Dr. Round writes on the < waite-fe '
or payment to the castle watchmen of Norwich in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries.
Prof. F. M. Powicke supports Prof. M'Kechnie's interpretation of
abbrevientur (i.e. to be * shortened') in Number 13 of the Articles of the
Barons in 1215. H. G. Richardson prints documents of Edward III.'s
reign proving forgeries of fines. Margaret Tout (a name one welcomes)
adds to the vouchers of Bracton's 'Comitatus Paleys' of Chester (1238), a
plea roll of that shire in 1310, styling it * comitatus pallacii.' The Royal
Charters of Winchester from Edward the Confessor to Henry II. are
edited — there are forty-nine of them — by V. H. Galbraith with excellent
annotations.
Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural Society Proceedings during the
Tear 1919 (fourth series, vol. v. pp. Ixxxiv, 163; Taunton, 1920)
demonstrate the maintenance against all adverse conditions of a high
spirit not only in research but also in the adventure of production now
grown so difficult. Matter of the first merit appears in Sir H. Maxwell
Lyte on * Burci, Falaise and Martin,' Norman settlers in Somerset at the
62 Current Literature
Conquest. Equally valuable and richly illustrated is an instalment of Dr.
A. C. Fryer's * Monumental Effigies in Somerset,' devoted to thirteenth-
fourteenth century civilians and of importance for feminine costume. Mr.
Henry Symonds, under the heading * A By-Path of the Civil War,' edits a
bundle of transcripts of local documents dating from the spring of 1645
and relative to the political disturbances of the period. The paper is water-
marked 'G. & S. 1812.' May these transcriptions not have been done for
the old Record Commission, the l copy ' for which did not all reach print,
and sometimes passed into private hands ?
The final chapter — unfortunately final in more senses than one — of
Lord Guthrie's articles on R. L. Stevenson appears in the June number of
the Juridical Review, brightened by three sketches of corners of Swanston
Cottage and by several quotations from the correspondence of the Stevenson
circle. Mr. C. M. Aitchison writes on * Courts-Martial ' and Dr. Th.
Baty on the * Basis of Responsibility,' the latter showing the present
tendency to carry the source of liability beyond tort to something like an
obligation of insurance.
The Caledonian, as ' An American Magazine,' is miscellaneous and com-
prehensive in its May number, which includes a portrait of Rev. Donald
MacDougall, a native of North Uist, founder of the paper, who died in
March this year. Themes of this issue include Clan Skene, * Glasgow
Scenes and Memories,' and chronicles of transplanted Scots. In June Clan
Gunn has its biography, and Judge Benet trounces 'the Sinn-Fein Circus.'
A reprinted poem, * The Kirky Brae,' recalls the many-sided interest of
Cromarty and its kirkyard.
The issue of this magazine for August apropos the reinterment of
Major Duncan Campbell, hero of Stevenson's poem ' Ticonderoga,' repeats
in an article by F. B. Richards the half legendary story of Jane M'Crea,
who was assassinated in 1777 by an Indian chief. One of the illustrations
is a plate of the Major's tombstone. He died in 1758 'of The Wounds
He Received In The Attack of The Retrenchments of Ticonderoga.'
It strikes us on this side of the water as a novel experiment to find the
Iowa Journal of History and Politics devoting the entire October (1919)
number to a statement of the legislation effected by the Thirty-eighth
General Assembly of Iowa which met January 13, 1909, and adjourned
April 19 following. Perhaps, however, no better mode could have been
devised to mirror the public spirit seen in a State Legislature. Out of
1,134 bills and resolutions introduced 406 were passed. Subjects embraced
codification, woman suffrage, state officers and salaries, powers of the
governor, municipal management, highways, motors and schools — all types
familiar to ourselves. Food and drugs, housing, liquor, hotels, corporations,
taxation, the 'red flag ' are all here too. America is only Europe writ over
again. One real novelty there is : a statutory authority to a sick or storm-
stayed judge to adjourn his court by telephone ! The patient and very
instructive analysis of the enactments is the work of Assistant Professor
John E. Briggs and Instructor Cyril B. Upham, both exponents of Political
Current Literature 63
Science in Iowa State University. One Americanism is interesting: 'dead
timber ' signifying laws in desuetude.
In the Iowa Journal for April the chief contribution is G. F, Robeson's
article on 'Special Municipal Charters in Iowa, 1836-1858 ' exhibiting the
methods and conditions of incorporation and the powers, offices and
organisation. Taxation was jealously regulated, the average maximum
being a half per cent, on the assessed valuation of taxable property.
Finance, schools, fire, liquor control and the constitutions of mayorate and
judiciary were subjects of definition. In the score of years reviewed sixty
special charters were granted to forty cities and towns. In 1858 special
incorporation was forbidden, and a General Incorporation Act substantially
reaffirmed the former special provisions. A description of ' North-
western Iowa in 1855 ' by a surveyor, J. L. Ingalsbe, contains particulars
of Red Indian characteristics, which rather serve the part assigned to them
as ' antidote to Hiawatha.'
The Iowa Journal for July has an article by Charles R. Keyes discussing
the materials for local archaeology in which the effigy mounds are the most
distinctive element although rivalled by the linear mounds and conicals.
Neither the linears nor the effigies, however, have produced relics. The
great enclosures with earthen ramparts have been the chief sources of
archaeological treasure in stone and copper implements and ornaments.
As is usual in such phases of enquiry, the American investigators started
with theories of a vanished race of mound builders, greater than the types
known to the oldest settlers. This view of the mound builders as a separate
people has gradually given way before the advancing opinion tending to
establish the red man as the builder race. The modern archaeologists are
concerned equally with mound exploration as the primary task and with the
difficult problem of the permanent preservation of the finds as well as of the
mounds themselves, the disappearance of which would be an irreparable
loss. Antiquity best retains its hold by continuing visible.
In the same number Donald L. M'Murry, writing on the ' Soldier
Vote' in the election of 1888, recalls the hubbub in 1887 that followed
President Cleveland's order for the return to the Southern States of certain
captured Confederate battle flags held by the War Department. He had
to cancel the order. In 1905 they were returned without protest. Shall
we ever send back to Ireland the cannon taken at the Boyne ?
The French Quarterly for March contains an important article by M.
Lanson on * Le Discours sur les passions de F amour, est-il de Pascal ?
which no student of Pascal can ignore. The distinguished French writer,
after a careful examination, decides in favour of the view that the author-
ship of this curious treatise must be attributed to Pascal. M. Maillet pro-
pounds an interesting theory on c La Civilisation e^enne et la vocabulaire
mediterranean,' and M. Albert Mathiey deals with ' Un Project d'alliance
franco-britannique en 1790,' on which interesting light is cast on the secret
mission of Pitts' agents, Hugh Elliot and W. A. Miles.
Communications
ALEXANDER, SON OF DONALD, EARL OF MAR. I am
indebted to one of my colleagues in the Public Record Office for the
following transcript from ' Accounts, etc. (Exchequer), Box 356, No. 8,
m. 5 dj which throws light upon the hitherto unknown fate of Alexander,
the third son of Donald, Earl of Mar, who, for convenience of reference,
is styled the sixth Earl in The Scots Peerage.
The account of him given in that work : is as follows :
1 3. Alexander, who was imprisoned in the Tower of London by order
of King Edward I. on 12 December, 1297, along with Edward Baliol, the
son of King John Baliol. No further notice of him has been found.'
The writer of the article refers to Bain's Calendar of Documents relating to
Scotland as his authority.
King Edward I. was absent on the Continent between the dates
22nd August, 1297, and I4th March, 1298. The entry on the Close Roll z
of the warrant instructing the Constable of the Tower to take over Edward
Baliol, Alexander, son of the Earl of Mar, and Robert de Stratherne from
the household of the Prince of Wales is set out in common form, and it
does not necessarily follow that the order originated from the king over-
seas. John Baliol had been transferred to the Tower on 6th August,
1 297, and those young hostages were sent to join him four months later.
The young member of the house of Mar must have died towards the end
of April, I299,3 after seventeen months of uninterrupted confinement.*
It is stated in the Chronicle of Lanerc ost 5 that in 1337, when Edward
Baliol was doing his utmost to wrest the Scottish crown from David
Bruce, he informed against three Scottish knights who tried to persuade
1 The Scots Peerage, vol. v. p. 578.
2 Close Roll, 26 Edw. I. m. 16. Stevenson, Documents Illustrative of the History
of Scotland, vol. ii. pp. 251-2, and Bain, Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland,
vol. ii. No. 964, give m. 17 wrongly. Both these editors have seen that the Close
Roll gives ' Septerabris ' in error for ' Decembris.' The editor of the Close Roll
Calendar covering the period has overlooked this point.
3 Transcript below.
4 Bain, vol. ii. p. 265, where expenses of confinement for 1297-98 in the Tower
are given from the Pipe Roll ; and transcript below, which gives expenses for
last six months before Alexander's death. From the details of expenses in
Stevenson, vol. ii. No. dlviii., it is clear that the captives were well treated.
6 Stevenson's Bannatyne Club edition, vol. ii. p. 290.
Alexander, Son of Donald 65
him to break his oath of allegiance to Edward III. and to become an
independent and national king. Perhaps at the earlier date there was a
similar disposition among the leaders of the Scottish national party, inspired
by its victory on nth September, 1297, at Stirling Bridge and ready to
abandon John Baliol as a weak and resourceless king, to adopt Edward
Baliol as their leader, try to kidnap him and set him at the head of
national resistance ; and knowledge of this disposition, or fear that it might
arise, induced the English Council, taking no risks in the absence of their
king, to transfer Edward and his young associates from their gentle
captivity at Hertford in the household of the Prince of Wales to honour-
able, but safer, custody in the Tower. Alexander would be both a hostage
for the loyalty of his family, then stout partisans of Edward I., and a com-
panion to Edward Baliol.
The account, from which the following is an extract, is a cash account
of wardrobe receipts and payments for 1299. 'Stebenbeth ' is Stepney.
W. R. CUNNINGHAM.
Radulfo de Stikebourn custodi Alexandri filii comitis de Mar pro
minutis necessariis dicto Alexandro emptis per eundem ut pannis lineis
caligis sotularibus et stipendio lotricis sue dictum Alexandrum et pannos
suos lavantis per dimidium annum xiij.j. Eidem pro diversis electuariis et
speciebus emptis per eundem ad opus ejusdem Alexandri, et pro stipendio
cujusdam medici capientis curam ad eundem per xxiiijor dies mense Aprilis
per quos languebat ante mortem suam viij.j. \x.d.ob.
Eidem pro expensis factis circa humacionem dicti Alexandri defuncti ut
in oblacionibus participatis ad missas celebratas pro eodem die sepulture sue
et in factura fosse in qua sepeliebatur, et in uno lapide empto ad ponendum
super sepultura ejusdem, et aliis minutis expensis factis eodem die xxij. s.
vij. d. per manus proprias apud Stebenheth' viij° die Maii.
Summa xliij.y. \\\].d. ob. Pacatur.
A CURIOUS WORD FOR GREAT NEPHEW. In a contract of
1609 is the word EIROY, which occurs latinised as Pronepos in the sasine
following on the contract. The two deeds are amongst the writs of the
Lands of Kirnan or Keirnan in the Barony of Glasrie (Argyll), for ages held
by a branch of the MacEvir Campbells.
On 29th. Dec. at Dudop. Sir James Scrymgeour of Dudop, Knight
Constable of Dundee, and Alexander McEwir eiroy to umquhile Johne
McAllester (MaKewir) of Keirnan enter into a contract about the
augmented Rental of the 4 marklands of the two Keirnanesand i markland
of Auchaleck in the Barony of Glastrie, Shire of Argyll, which had long
been held of Dudop by the ancestors of Keirnan, and which after Resig-
nation into the superiors hands are regranted at higher feu duty.
Now after perusing the original deed in the Poltalloch Charter Chest I
was amused to see that in the Chartulary the word ' eiroy ' has been
rendered vcroy by a bewildered scribe !
But on examining the sasine taken on — January 1618, which is in the
usual Latin, it bears to be in favour of Alexander MaKewir as pronepos of
66 Curious Word
umquhle Iain (or John) MaKewir of Kerenane, to which the MacEvir
Campbell Lairds of Barmolloch and Leckuary and others are witnesses.
I think that c oy ' is always the word for grandson, so ' eiroy ' is the old word
for great-grandson, but I have never before happened to meet it. * Pronepos'
is given in dictionaries as either a nephew's son or great-grandson.
ARGYLL.
Inveraray Castle.
A NOTE ON ROMAN LAW IN SCOTLAND. The
Chartulary of Melrose contains a compositio or concordia between the
Knights of St. John of Torphichen and Reginald le Cheyn and his wife
Eustachia regarding the right of patronage of the Church of Ochiltree
(Howiltre) in the diocese of Glasgow.1 The parties submitted the dispute
to the Bishop of Glasgow and the instrument, which is fortified with
the consent of the Cathedral Chapter, embodies his decision. Cosmo
Innes attributes the instrument to the reign of Alexander III. (1249-
1285-6), and the Bishop concerned was Robert Wishart, who was con-
secrated in 1272-3. The Bishop decided that the Knights of St. John
should receive a yearly payment from the Parish of ^14, and that the
patronage should remain with Eustachia le Cheyn and her heirs. The
payment to the Knights is carefully provided for, and the carrying out of
the arrangment is secured by penal clauses and oaths.
The instrument concludes: l renunciando specialiter restitution in
integrum per actionem sive per officium judicis petende sue implorande et confi-
dent ex lege et sine causa vel injusta causa actioni etiam in factum et exceptioni
doli et metus et omnibus litteris et indulgentiis a sede apostolica impetratis et
impetrandis litteris regiis et omni actioni et exceptioni consuetudini et cavellacioni
sibi vel successoribus suis seu haeredibus quocumque jure seu titulo contra supradic-
tam ordinacionem vel present scnptum competentibus vel competere valentibus.
Renunciavit etiam pro edict a domina Eustachia pro se et haeredibus suis de
consensu expresso mariti sui predicti beneficio senatus consulti Pellezani et etiam
legis lulii fundi dotalis et omni juris remedio canonici et civilis sibi et suis
haeredibus contra praedictam ordinationem seu praesens scriptum quocumque jure
vel titulo competentibus vel competere valentibus?
It will be noted that the foregoing clauses contain renunciations of the civil
law remedies and pleas such as In integrum restitutio, condictio and exceptiof and
a renunciation by Eustachia le Cheyn, the owner of the right of patronage,
of her disabilities under the Senatusconsultum Velleianum and the Lex Julia de
fundo dotali. The whole passage quoted is of interest as evidence that at
least some scraps of Roman legal terminology were in use in Scotland in the
1 Liber de Melros, i. 228. In the fourteenth century the Church of Ochiltree
was granted by the Bishop of Glasgow to Melrose Abbey, and this probably
accounts for the presence of the instrument in the Chartulary of that house. — v.
Regis trum Glasgucnse, i. 224.
2 Cf. Liber de Calchou, p. 1 8 1, where a similar series of renunciations occurs in an
argument of 1287 between Kelso Abbey and the Templars, without, however, the
special feature of the Melrose Charter.
Roman Law 67
thirteenth century ; but the renunciation by a married woman of the
protection which that law provided recalls an interesting chapter in the
later history of Roman jurisprudence.1
The Lex Julia dated from 18 B.C., and the Senatusconsultum Velleianum
from 46 A.D.2 The former, in the words of Sohm, ' prohibited the hus-
band from alienating or mortgaging any fundus italicus comprised in the dos.
Justinian extended this prohibition to any fundus dotalis whatever. Not
even the wife's consent can make a mortgage or (according to Justinian's
enactment) a sale of the fundus dotalis by the husband valid. The object
is to preserve the land intact for the wife, to whom the dos will presumably
revert.'3 The significance of the latter and its persistence in the legal
practice of most European countries is the subject of Paul Gide's Etude
sur la Condition priv/e de la femme. (2nd edition, by Esmein, Paris,
1885.)
The object of the Senatusconsultum was to prevent a married woman from
undertaking obligations of a cautionary or similar character on behalf of her
husband and, by subsequent extension of the enactment by Justinian, on
behalf of third parties. Its effect was personal, and in this respect presented
a contrast to the Lex Julia, which was directed to the property involved.
This distinction was pleaded in support of the view that the benefit of the
Senatusconsultum could be renounced, while the inalienability of the dos was
independent of the action of the wife. A heated debate on this point
marked the revival of Roman law in France in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries — a revival which was followed by a warm recognition by the
jurists of the benefits of the Senatusconsultum.
During the centuries which preceded this revival the later feudal law
imposed no restrictions of this nature on the capacity of a * landed ' wife,
but when the study of Roman law was revived, the benefits of the Senatus-
consultum were embodied both in documents and in customary law. Gide
quotes or cites a number of French Charters of the latter half of the thir-
teenth and beginning of the fourteenth century to this effect, e.g. a
Burgundian Charter of 1302 which contains the following renunciation by a
married woman : ' Et toutes les chases dessus dictes et une chacune^je contesson
de Genove, femme doudit Monseignor Jehan, seinghor de Mireboul, de ma bonne
volonte" et son cohercion nulle, dou comandement et fautorite dou dit Monseignor
Jehan mon mart, lou veul et ottrois et approvals . . . et renonfons en ce faiat a
certaine science et pas noire saviement . . . a toutes graces et privileges qui sont
ottroii/es en favor des femmes, a la loi Julie dous fans de doaire non aliener et a
la loi dou saige Foleyen ; a toute hayde de droit decanon et de lois, et a toutes ex-
t1 It is not safe to infer any extensive knowledge of Roman jurisprudence from
e references to Roman law which are found in many of the chartularies of
religious houses. Fitting has devoted much ingenuity to tracing the life of civil law
through the dark ages by this means, but his conclusions have been successfully
challenged by his French colleagues, and notably by Flach. Cf. Melanges Fitting
(Montpellier, 1908), i. 383, ii. 203.
2D. xvi. I C. iv. 29 : Nov. 134 cap. 8 and D. xxiii. 5.
3 Institutes, S. 82.
68 Roman Law
ceptions, droitsy raisons, allegations^ detentions de fait et de droit et autres aueles
que/es soient.'1
The point of contact between Scotland and Europe in the thirteenth
century was probably Normandy. In that duchy the legists found little
difficulty in reconciling the provisions of the Senatusconsu/tum with their
customary law, and its provisions continued to be in force in Normandy
long after they had been abandoned in most of the French provinces.
In Normandy again the pre-Justinian view of the Lex Julia prevailed which
permitted alienation of the wife's heritage with her consent.2 Attendance
at the Law School of Orleans may have made Scotch students familiar with
the much debated questions arising from the Senatusconsu/turn. The
canonists, however, had played the most important part in the introduction
of the clause by which the benefit of the Senatusconsu/tum was renounced.
The Church was interested in removing obstacles from the path of pious
ladies who desired to give practical expression to their devotion, and by the
time of Pope Alexander III. a papal decretal recognised the right of a
married woman to bind herself along with her husband.3
The clause of renunciation of the benefits of the Senatusconsultum is
frequently found in French Charters of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. It was inserted by notaries in many instruments without much
reference to their content. It pleased these worthies to make a parade of
tag ends of Roman law which exhausted their knowledge of the subject. It
is probable that it is to the work of a foreign scribe in the employment of
the Knights of St. John that we owe the appearance of the clause in the
Melrose Charter. Someone, however, may be tempted to search through
the chartularies for further evidence for the thesis that the dotal system,
with a Norman complexion, prevailed in Scotland in the thirteenth century.
The communio bonorum was inconsistent with the disability created by the
Senatusconsultum and with the provisions of the Lex Julia.*
DAVID BAIRD SMITH.
1 Gide, Of>. clt. 393 n. I. Viollet quotes an instrument of 1277 which
contains a clause to the effect that the wife had had the purport of the S.C.
explained to her — 'asserens se esse certioratam quod sit senatus consultum
Velleianum.' — Etablissements de St. Louis (Paris, 1883), iii. 192 n. 5 and 215 ; cf.
Brissaud, Droit J ran 'fats (Paris, 1904) ii. 1141 n. 7.
2 Viollet, Histoire du droit civil franfais (Paris, 1905), p. 850.
*Decref. Alex. III. Tit. 28, cap. 8.
4 Kames' Elucid. Art. i ; Fraser, Personal and Domestic Relations (Edinburgh,
1846) i. 247 and 322 et sqq. Tardif, Coutumiers de Normandie (Paris, 1896), ii.
244. De Buen Maritagii Impedite; Pollock & Maitland, History of English Law
(2nd Ed.), ii. 399.
The
Scottish Historical Review
VOL. XVIIL, No. 70 JANUARY, 1921
The Passages of St. Malachy through Scotland
r I ^HE movement for the establishment of the continental
JL system of ecclesiastical organization was rapidly pro-
gressing in Ireland as well as in Scotland in the early years of
the twelfth century. The island was mapped out into separate
dioceses, each with a bishop having ecclesiastical jurisdiction
within his own area. A like movement was going on in Scotland
during the same period when the native church was remodelled
after the Roman or continental type. If St. Margaret had much
to do with the reformation in Scotland, it may be said that the
work was propagated to completion by her son, David I. The
movement brought prominent sympathizers over the greater
part of Europe into contact. It was taken up so vigorously in
Ireland by St. Malachy of Armagh that he may be regarded as
one of the principal forces behind it in that country. In the
furtherance of his scheme he resolved to visit Rome and seek
papal assistance. In the course of his pilgrimages to the Eternal
City, he called at Clairvaux where he formed an intimate friend-
ship with its famous abbot, St. Bernard, at that time perhaps
the most influential ecclesiastic in Europe. On St. Malachy's
second journey to Rome, he was suddenly seized with mortal
sickness at Clairvaux and died on 2nd November, 1148, in the
arms of St. Bernard.
Almost immediately after his death, an account of his life was
written by that prelate. It is mainly from this narrative there
may be gleaned almost all that is known of the passages of the
S.H.R. VOL. XVIII. E
70 Rev. Canon Wilson, Litt.D.
Irish saint through the south-west of Scotland as he journeyed
from his home in the north of Ireland, on his ecclesiastical
missions to Rome.
As the trustworthiness of St. Bernard's narrative is of the
greatest importance, it may be well to glance at the date when
it was written and the sources from which this foreign ecclesiastic
obtained his information. The internal evidence supplies all
that is needed to give satisfaction. As St. Bernard died on
2oth August, 1 1 53, the margin between the death of St. Malachy
and that of his biographer is only small : indeed as Henry,
prince of Scotland, not to speak of King David his father, is
spoken of as then alive, the work must have been completed
before 1 2th June, 1152. There is no need to strain circumstantial
allusions in the text that the date of the narrative may be brought
into a narrower compass.
The sources of St. Bernard's information are also satisfactory.
The intimacy between the two saints, while St. Malachy was a
guest at Clairvaux on three occasions, adumbrates that the
narrator's facts and impressions were gained at first hand. In
addition, four companions of St. Malachy were left behind in
Clairvaux on the occasion of his second visit that they might be
instructed in the Cistercian mode of life. There is indication
also that St. Bernard had formal memoranda before him of the
saint's movements and aims, supplied either by the Irish brethren
at Clairvaux or communicated by correspondents in Ireland.
The task of writing the Life of St. Malachy was undertaken by
desire of one of these correspondents and it was afterwards
dedicated to him The completed work, as stated by its author,1
was not panegyric, but narrative : its truth was assured since
the facts had been communicated by persons in Ireland, for
beyond doubt they asserted nothing but things of which they
had the most certain information. The Scottish reminiscences,
however, must be referred to the oral relations of St. Malachy
himself, or more probably to those of his companions. Though
St. Bernard states that he omitted to mention the places where
St. Malachy's miracles were wrought, owing to the barbarous
sound of their names, he did not adhere strictly to his rule when
incidentally describing the saint's passages through Scotland.
The number of places named in that country, when compared
with similar mentions in other countries through which the
saint travelled, seems to suggest a special interest in the author's
1 y"ttat preface.
St. Malachy in Scotland 71
mind. Though it cannot be claimed that St. Bernard was
personally acquainted with King David, there is no doubt that
he was interested in the ecclesiastical movement in which that
king was so deeply immersed. From his narrative we get the
earliest mention of some place-names in Galloway and some
tantalizing allusions, the elucidation of which may well be the
subject of debate.
It will not be necessary to discuss at large the dates of St.
Malachy's journeys, as there cafc scarcely be a second opinion
about them. Professor Lawlor 1 has recently studied the period
with such circumspection that others may not glean where he
has reaped. But so far as we are here concerned, chronology
as to day and month has no need to be exact. The approximate
time of his several journeys is quite sufficient for our purpose.
It may be taken that he passed through Scotland to and from
Rome in the same year, 1140, and that his second journey out-
ward was made in 1 148, the year of his death at Clairvaux. The
Irish saint thus made three separate journeys through the south-
west of Scotland, twice in 1140 and once in 1148, though it is
venturesome to assume that on all occasions he pursued exactly
the same route.
Though the ecclesiastical status of the regions in Scotland
through which he passed is not so well defined as one would
wish, there is no uncertainty at all of their political unity at that
time. Within the period, 1140-1148, the territorial boundary
of Scotland on the south-west, the scene of St. Malachy's pil-
grimages, was fixed at the Rerecross on Stainmore on the very
border of Yorkshire. The north-eastern or greater part of
Cumberland and the eastern half of Westmorland were integral
portions of the Scottish kingdom as well as the whole of modern
Scotland. This lesson in political geography must have been
known to St. Malachy and his companions, and if not, it must
have been taught them by their intercourse with King David,
or learned from their own experience on their journeyings.
Without a doubt a knowledge of it is assumed by St. Bernard
in his narrative. When, therefore, the name of Scotland is
mentioned in the Life of St. Malachy, it must be understood as
t'See his * Notes on St. Bernard's Life of St. Malachy ' in the Proceedings of the
al Irish Academy, vol. xxxv. Section C, No. 6, pp. 230-264, which may be
:n as an introduction to his translation of St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life
of St. Malachy of Armagh (S.P.C.K., 1920). These studies when viewed together
form an exhaustive analysis of what is known of St. Malachy's place in history.
72 Rev. Canon Wilson, Litt.D.
implying the larger Scotland as it existed when St. Bernard
wrote, the Scotland under the rule of King David, during the
usurpation of King Stephen in England.
A study of St. Bernard's vague narrative of the first pilgrimage
only shows that St. Malachy set out to Scotland from some
unmentioned place in Ireland early in 1140. After certain
administrative preparations had been made, ' St. Malachy set out
on his journey, and when he had left Scotland, he reached York.' 1
Though the narrator says nothing more, it is suggested that the
place of his departure from Ireland was at Bangor, the saint's
headquarters at that period, and that he sailed to the opposite
coast. The suggestion is at least plausible. From an early
date the northern shore of the Rhins of Galloway has been
regarded as a landing place from the north of Ireland. It was
on that coast in portu qut Rintsnoc dicitur that the stone curroc,
which carried St. Cuthbert and his mother, found a haven.
Though the statement comes from a fabulous composition,2
it has some reference to an early tradition about the connexion
of Ireland and Galloway, and its value is enhanced by the ad-
mission of the author that much of what was contained in his
pages had been related by St. Malachy to King David. He had
been evidently reading St. Bernard's Life of the saint and the
belief was then current that the Rhins afforded a convenient
port for a sea passage from Ireland.
In any case there is no possibility for dispute that St. Malachy
must have passed through Carlisle on his way through Scotland
to York, and there is nothing unreasonable in the conjecture
that he had made the acquaintance of King David on his journey,
though St. Bernard is silent about it. From what had transpired
in the metropolitan city, we learn something of his mode of travel.
He had with him five priests besides ministers and other clerks,
perhaps twelve companions in all, the traditional number after
the sacred model. Such was the composition of the cavalcade
on the first journey through Scotland. But as there were only
, §35-
2 The phrase is noteworthy : * et miro modo in lapidea devectus navicula, apud
Galweiam in regione ilia, quae Rennii vocatur, in portu qui Rintsnoc dicitur,
applicuit. In cujus portus littore curroc lapidea adhuc perdurasse videtur ' (Miscel-
lanea Biographiea, Surtees Soc., p. 77). At the conclusion of this fabulous
* Libellus de ortu S. Cuthberti ' (p. 87) the author states that ' Sanctus equidem
Malachias regi David Scottorum quam plurima de hiis retulit,' as he had pre-
viously insisted in his preface, that his story of the Irish origin of St. Cuthbert was
supported by good evidence.
St. Malachy in Scotland 73
three horses for the company, it is clear that progress was made
at a walking pace.
It may be noted also that the stay at York was long enough for
the news to spread, and there was time enough for a visit from
Waldeve, stepson of King David, who was at that time prior
of the Augustinian monastery of Kirkham, some sixteen miles
from the city. A previous acquaintance, as Raine suggested,1
is scarcely possible. It is far more likely that the fame of St.
Malachy and the errand on which he was engaged were attracting
notice in England. The death of Archbishop Thurstin took
place on 5th February, 1140, about the time that St. Malachy
reached York, and as Prior Waldeve is said 2 to have been a
candidate for the vacant primacy, interest in a famous ecclesiastic
on a journey to Rome would be a powerful incentive. At all
events the Prior did not lose the opportunity of conferring a
favour on the distinguished pilgrim to whom he gave the hack
(runcinus] 3 on which he rode.
The return of St. Malachy from Rome and Clairvaux was
not long delayed. It is supposed that he reached Scotland in
the autumn of the same year, 1 140. The account of his exploits
on the homeward journey far exceeds in detail what St. Bernard
tells of him in other countries The names of places through
which he travelled are sparingly given, and they are only
mentioned for the purpose of illustrating some marvel which the
saint performed. The identification of some of these places,
so obscure are allusions to them, is often precarious, and the
places mentioned in Scotland are no exception to the rule. But,
first of all, the narrative of St. Bernard should be approached
from the right view-point. The narrator is writing in Clairvaux
and describing the outward journey of St. Malachy from that
place to his home in Ireland. ' Malachy set out from us,' he 4
says, ' and had a prosperous journey to Scotland (prospers pervenit
in Scotiam\ and he found King David, who is still alive to-day,
1 Priory ofHexham (Surtees Soc.), i. 139, 157.
2 Raine, Fasti Ebor., i. 222. On the authority of the Bollandists (Acta SS.,
Aug. 3) Raine states that Waldeve would have been elected if King Stephen had
not interfered. The King was afraid that Waldeve, owing to his relationship to
King David, would play, if elected, into the hands of the King of Scots. The
view taken by the hagiologists may be seen in Fordun, Scotichronicon (ed. Goodall),
i- 343-4-
36.
, § 40 ; Migne, Patrologta, vol. clxxxij. 1095.
74 Rev. Canon Wilson, Litt.D.
in one of his castles (in quodam castello sud), whose son was sick
unto death.' Need there be any ambiguity about this statement ? *
There is no mention of Carlisle, which was at that time well
within the Scottish Kingdom. The castle there, which was
King David's headquarters, is the only place that will fit into
the historical setting and harmonize with the details of the story.
For political reasons, in view of the recent annexation of the
province, the king had made Carlisle the southern capital of his
kingdom : there he built, if we can believe the chronicle of
Huntingdon,2 a very strong citadel (fortissimam arcem) and
heightened the walls of the city. Many incidents took place in
Carlisle touching the life and movements of the royal family,
not only of King David, but of Prince Henry and his wife the
Countess Ada, to whom he was married in 1 139. The meeting
of St. Malachy with the family at Carlisle in the autumn of 1 1 40
is not inconsistent, so far as I know, with any recorded event in
their lives : in fact, the circumstances of the narrative presuppose
it. By necessity the saint must have passed through Carlisle
on each of his journeys, and from what transpired on this occasion
it would seem that he had met King David before. At all events
1 The identification of this place is largely dependent on a right interpretation
of this passage. O'Hanlan says that ' on his arrival in Scotland, he paid a visit to
the Court of King David,' and makes no attempt to identify the castle (Life of St.
Malachy O'Morgair, p. 80), but Dr. Lawlor suspects an error in the narrative here,
and translates that ' Malachy had a prosperous journey through Scotland,' assuming
' that the castle referred to was in the immediate neighbourhood of Cruggleton,'
near Whithorn, where probably King David had been on a visit to Fergus, lord
of Galloway (St. Bernard's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh, p. 76). Will the passage
bear this interpretation ? St. Malachy had not yet passed through Scotland ; he
had only come into it. Compare the usage of perveniens in the parallel passage of
Aelred at this period when describing the flight of King David to Carlisle after
the Battle of the Standard — * Sicque ad Carleolum usque perveniens ' (Twysden,
Decem Scriptures, col. 346). The tenor of St. Bernard's story, too, presupposes
that it was one of the monarch's own castles in which St. Malachy found
him with his sick son, not in a castle of one of his magnates, where he had
been the guest.
1 Chronicles of the Picts and Scots (ed. Skene), p. 212. It was natural that the
Scottish king should seek to protect his new capital on the south of the city against
the English, as William Rufus had built the keep of the castle on the north
against the Scots. The fortissima arx of King David, now represented by the
Courts of Carlisle, was known as the Citadel of Carlisle so long as the city remained
a fortified town. Mr. George Neilson propounded an ingenious argument in
1895 r^at the arx King David built was the keep ascribed to Rufus (Notes and
Queries, 26th Oct., 1895, No. 200, pp. 321-3). If this be so, how could an arx
built in 1148 be described as 'la grant tur antive' in 1174 (Chron. de Jordan
Fantosme, 1. 615, Surtees Soc.) ?
St. Malachy in Scotland 75
the news of the Prince's illness * directed his steps to the castle.
The cure was not instantaneous : the saint's ministrations did
not take effect till the following day, when the young man
(iuuenis) was restored to health. There was joy in the castle
at his recovery. Declining an invitation to remain some days
with the royal party, St. Malachy pursued his journey in the
morning.
The next stage of the journey home, mentioned by St. Bernard,
was in Galloway, where he healed a dumb girl at Crugeldum :
then he entered a village which the people called Kirkmichael
(ecclesia sancti Michaelis] where another cure was effected. But
when the saint came to the Portus Lapasperi he embarked for
Ireland, after waiting some days for a passage. The topo-
graphical allusions here are for the most part very puzzling.
The traditional interpretation is that St. Malachy cured the mute
girl at Cruggleton 2 in the parish of Sorby, nor far from Whit-
horn, from which he passed to Kirk Mochrum, whose ancient
church is said to have been entitled in the name of St. Michael.3
Later on, he went to Cairngarrock, which is alleged to be Gaelic
for Portus Lapasperi^ a few miles south of Downpatrick, and
from that place he crossed over to Bangor on the opposite
coast.
The suggestion that St. Malachy travelled in the peninsula
between Luce Bay and Wigtown Bay raises no misgiving. It
was natural for him to choose a route well trodden by a constant
stream of pilgrims before the Reformation. Whithorn was the
cradle of Scottish Christianity and St. Ninian's grave was one
of the holy places of Scotland. The mention of the village of
Cruggleton in that neighbourhood lends credibility to the theory,
and on the supposition that the church of Mochrum was a St.
Michael's church and that there were no other ancient churches
of that dedication in the vicinity, the exact locality may be said
to be well authenticated. But to send St. Malachy from the
1 Prince Henry a short time before the visit of St. Malachy had been severely
mauled at the siege of Ludlow in 1 1 39, * ubi idem Henricus unco ferreo equo
abstractus poene captus est, sed ipse rex eum ab hostibus splendid e retraxit'
(Henry of Huntingdon, Hist. Anglorum, p. 265, R.S.) King Stephen, after
making a treaty with King David, brought back Prince Henry with him to
Ludlow. According to Sir Archibald Lawrie, who calculates that the Prince was
born about 1114 (Early Scottish Charters, pp. 277, 321), St. Bernard's iuuenis
would be then about 26 years of age.
2 O'Hanlon, op. cit., pp. 80-8 1 .
3 Lawlor, op. cit., p. 78.
76 Rev. Canon Wilson, Litt.D.
south of the peninsula on a tour round by Glenluce that he may
get to Cairngarrock strains reasonable belief. There is no real
evidence alleged that either of the three Cairngarrocks on
opposite sides of the Rhins of Galloway was ever a port of
passage to Ireland or elsewhere. The etymology, moreover,
which explains the Gaelic name as the equivalent of Portus
Lapasperi l in Latin is exceedingly insecure. If etymology
is admitted to this discussion, Portyerrock, the outlet by sea of
that peninsula, is far more likely. Its usage as a port 2 seems
to be well established both before and after St. Malachy's
peregrinations.
The narrative of St. Bernard gives no clue to enable us to
account for the saint's presence on the peninsula. When
he crossed the river Cree, he would have made for Glenluce
if he was aiming to sail from the Cairngarrock a little to the
south of Downpatrick. Such would have been the direct
route. But he made a detour to Whithorn. Why was this ?
We have already suggested that it was to visit one of the holy
places, but the purpose of St. Malachy's presence there becomes
more easily accounted for on the understanding that he had
made no detour at all, but was pursuing a direct journey to
reach his port. If the traditional identification of the Portus
Lapasperi as one of the Cairngarrocksbeabandoned,St. Malachy's
itinerary in the peninsula provokes no suspicion. On the
assumption that Portyerrock was his destination, the incidents
of the narrative fall into their natural places. There is no
1 Dr. Lavvlor departs from the Benedictine text of Laperasperi (Migne, Patrologia,
vol. clxxxij, 1096) and substitutes Lapasperi throughout his translation ; the change
is a happy emendation and makes the word more intelligible. But it is doubtful
whether the philological claims of Cairngarrock are so strong and well grounded
as those of Portyerrock to account for all the elements in Portus Lapasperi. The
letter g at the beginning of a syllable not infrequently becomes y in modern
speech.
2 Dr. Skene identifies the * Beruvik ' in Nial's Saga with Portyerrock where the
Norwegian chiefs laid up their ships after the Battle of Cluantarbh, from which
they fared up into Whithorne and were with Earl Melkoff or Malcolm for a year
(Celtic Scotland, i. 390). It was from this port 'in Galueia apud civitatem
Witerne' that Cardinal Vivian sailed to the Isle of Man in 1176, some 35
years after St. Malachy's visit to that region (Benedict Abbas, R.S., i. 137;
Twysden, Ckron. Joh. Bromton, col. mi). As Cruggleton is close by, there is
nothing adventurous in suggesting that it was to Portyerrock that John Comyn,
earl of Boghan, brought the lead ore which he dug ' in our mine of Calf in the
Isle of Man in 1292 for the purpose of covering eight turrets on his castle of
Crigeltone in Galloway (Cal. of Patent Rolls, 1281-02, p. 497 ; Stevenson,
Documents, etc., i. 329).
St. Malachy in Scotland 77
good ground for attributing to early travellers a disinclination
for sea voyages, or a desire to cross the sea by the shortest passage
between land and land. The sea-borne trade of Scotland with
France and Flanders was conducted from Scottish, not English,
ports.
The delay of St. Malachy, during the time he was waiting
for the sailing of his ship, was not passed in idleness. In the
interval an oratory 1 was constructed of twigs woven into a hedge,
he himself working as well as supervising When it was finished,
he surrounded it with a wall and blessed the inclosed space for a
cemetery. The place became a shrine afterwards, as St. Bernard
relates,2 where miracles occurred as it was reported to him up
to the time he wrote. Returning to the port, St. Malachy
embarked in a ship and after a prosperous voyage landed at the
monastery of Bangor,3 but the time it took to complete the
passage is not mentioned.
St. Bernard does not tell us the name of the place in Ireland
from which St. Malachy embarked in 1148 on his second
journey to Rome for the palls, but from whatever port he
sailed he arrived in Scotland on the same day. When he went
on board and had completed nearly half the voyage, suddenly
a contrary wind drove the ship back and brought it to the land
of Ireland again. In the morning, however, he went on board
again, and the same day, after a prosperous crossing came into
Scotland. On the third day he reached a place called Viride
Stagnum : which he had prepared that he might found an
abbey there, and leaving some of his sons and brothers as a
convent of monks and an abbot (for he had brought them with
him for that purpose), he bade them farewell and set out on his
journey.4 Attempts at identification here are clearly futile.
There is no foothold, except Viride Stagnum, which is descriptive
of many pools in Galloway, where the saint founded a monastery
presumably of Cistercian monks. It is * surely a mistake,' as
Keith 5 long ago suggested, to identify it with Soulseat where
1 The action of St. Malachy in this respect was very irregular and betokened
the backwardness of the ecclesiastical movement in Galloway. There is no refer-
ence to a Bishop of Candida Casa, without whose consent a new chapel or oratory
could not have been erected there (Robertson, Stat. Eccl. Scot., pp. II, 258 ;
Wilkins, Concilia, i. 382, 415). But the saint was acting like John Wesley as if
the whole world was his parish.
2 Vita, §41. 3 Vita, §42. 4 Vita, § 68.
5 Scottish Bishops (ed. Russel), p. 398. The whole of the story here is very
inscrutable. St. Bernard seemed to think that a monastery could be founded by
78 Rev. Canon Wilson, Litt.D.
Fergus, lord of Galloway, founded1 a monastery of Premon-
stratensian canons before 1 1 60, that is, a little before or a little
after St. Malachy's foundation. The obscurity here will
probably always remain a mystery.
In order to find another stage of the journey of St. Malachy
in Scotland, we must turn from the narrative of St. Bernard to
the pages of the Chronicle of Lanercost2 where there has been
preserved an episode of his pilgrimage long remembered on the
Border. In recording the death of Robert de Brus, lord of
Annandale, under 1295, the chronicler refers to an interesting
incident in the annals of that noble family. Some time ago, he
says, there lived in Ireland a certain bishop and monk of the
Cistercian order, a holy man named Malachi, who at the com-
mand of the captain-general of the order hastened to that place
(Clairvaux) where also he died and rests in peace, remaining
famous by his miracles (signis). When he died the holy Bernard,
who was present, preached an exceedingly mournful sermon,
which the canon of Lanercost had often seen.3
When this bishop had crossed from the north of Ireland, and,
travelling on foot through Galloway, came to Annan with two
fellow-clerics, he inquired of the inhabitants who would give
him hospitality. When they declared that an illustrious man,
lord of that district, who was there at the time, would willingly
do so, he humbly sought some dinner which was liberally pro-
vided. When the servants inquired, seeing that he had been
travelling, whether they should anticipate the dinner hour or
await the master's table, he begged that he might have dinner
a stroke of the pen in a strange land and that the community could live without
maintenance.
1 It is not quite certain that Fergus founded the monastery at Soulseat, but it is
so assumed in the Seotichronicon, ii. 538, and in later writings.
* Chron. de Lanercost (Maitland Club), pp. 159-161 ; Sir Herbert Maxwell's
translation, pp. 111-114.
3 It is evident that the writings of St. Bernard were extensively known at an
early period. Not only at Lanercost at the end of the thirteenth century, but at
Hexham in the latter half of the twelfth, were his writings familiar. Prior John
of Hexham speaks of the Life of St. Malachy which * Bernardus abbas Clarae-vallis
fideli scribit relatu ' (Priory of Hexham, i. 156-7, Surtees Soc.). The same life
was also known to Fordun (Scotichronicon, i. 295, ed. Goodall), Trivett (Annals,
p. 26, E.H.S.) and others. His theological writings acquired for him the title of
' Last of the Fathers,' so great was their authority. Dr. Lawlor adds in an
appendix a translation of the 'sermonem satis lugubrem ' referred to by the
Lanercost scribe.
St. Malachy in Scotland 79
at once. When a table had been prepared for him on the north
side of the hall, he sat down with his two companions to refresh
himself: and as the servants were discussing the death of a
certain robber that had been taken, who was then awaiting the
sentence of justice, the baron entered the hall and bade his
guests welcome.
Then the gentle bishop, relying entirely on the courtesy of
the noble, said — * As a pilgrim I crave a boon from your excel-
lency, that as sentence of death has not hitherto polluted any
place where I was present, let the life of this culprit, if he has
committed an offence, be given to me.' The noble host agreed,
not amiably but deceitfully, and privily ordered that the male-
factor should suffer death. When he had been hanged, and
the bishop had finished his meal, the baron came in to his dinner.
After pronouncing a blessing on the household he took his
leave, and as he was passing through the town he beheld by the
wayside the thief hanging on the gallows. Then, sorrowing
in spirit, he pronounced a heavy sentence, first on the lord of the
place, and his offspring, and next upon the town, which the
course of events confirmed : for soon afterwards the rich man
died in torment, three of his heirs in succession perished in the
flower of their age, some before they had been five years in
possession, others before they had been three.
In the early years of manhood it would appear that the story
of St. Malachy's malediction on his ancestors and descendants
had been told to Robert de Brus, the competitor, who hastened
to present himself before his shrine and undertook to do likewise
every three years that the curse might be removed. When in
his last days he was returning from the Holy Land where he had
been with Prince Edward,1 he turned aside to Clairvaux and
made his peace for ever with the saint, providing a perpetual
rent, out of which provision there are maintained upon the
saint's tomb three silver lamps with their lights : and thus through
his deeds of piety this Robert de Brus alone had been buried at
a good old age.
Though this tradition originated some twenty years before
1 Prince Edward set out on the Crusade in 1270 ; after leaving Palestine he
spent most of 1273 in France carrying on a little war at Chalons, near to Clair-
vaux, and returned to England in 1274 (Hemingburgh, i. 337-40, ii. I, E.H.S.).
Robert de Brus is numbered among the Crusaders who had protection of their
possessions for four years during absence from the realm with Prince Edward (Cal.
«f Patent Rolls, 1266-72, pp. 465, 480).
8o Rev. Canon Wilson, Litt.D.
the priory of Austin Canons was founded at Lanercost, where
it is supposed the Chronicle was written, it will be difficult to
dispute the truth of its main features. St. Malachy was well
known in Carlisle, nine miles from Lanercost, and one of his
two previous visits to that city, in which there was a priory of
the same order, was sufficiently remarkable to make his exploits
memorable. It is not necessary to assume exactness in the
Lanercost report of the Annan incident or to pry too curiously
into every detail of the tradition. All that requires to be said
is that the framework of the story is worthy of credit.
The trustworthiness of the tradition has had singular corro-
boration by the discovery of a charter in the archives of the
Aube, a copy of which M. Guignard communicated to Count
Montalembert in 1855. Since its publication the story in the
Lanercost Chronicle cannot be treated as a mere monkish
legend. By this deed Robert de Brus, lord of Annandale, gave
to the monks of Clairvaux the land of Osticroft in his lordship
ad sustinandum luminare coram beato Malachia in their church.1
As it was issued in Annandale about 1273, all the witnesses
being well known men of that district, and carries the seal of the
competitor, no doubts may be entertained of its genuineness.
M. Guignard was unable to read the legend on the seal in its
entirety, but enough was deciphered to prove its identity. There
is no need, so far as we are here concerned, to uphold the em-
bellishments of the Lanercost tradition : the curse of Malachy
on the deceitful Brus may be true or untrue. It is enough to
know that the saint was hospitably entertained in the hall of
Annan and made the acquaintance of its lordly owner. This
circumstance, perhaps, prepares us for the direction of his
subsequent journey in England.
There is no mistaking the next stage of St. Malachy's journey
after his departure from Annan to which, according to Camden,
access by land 2 was very difficult. He would naturally seek one
of the waths 3 or fords of the estuary of the Eden opposite Annan
1 There is no occasion to repeat the text of the charter here or to offer proofs of
its genuineness. A full discussion has been given by M. Guignard (Migne,
Patrologia, clxxxv. 1759-60), and his conclusions have been accepted by Father
O'Hanlon (Life of St. Malachy, pp. 193-5) and by Mr. George Neilson (Scots Lore
pp. 124-30). The French editor identified the charter with such perspicacity
that little was left unsaid.
* Britannia, ed. Gibson, p. 1195.
8 The fords over Solway sands were the recognised highway between England
and Scotland on the western border from an early period. It was by this route
St. Malachy in Scotland 81
and make straight for Carlisle. Passing on, as St. Bernard l
relates, King David met him, by whom he was received with
joy and was detained as his guest for some days : and having
done many things pleasing to God, he resumed the journey he
had begun. This was the saint's third and last visit to Carlisle.
It would be pleasant to think that he had met Archbishop Henry
Murdac of York when he visited King David in Carlisle that
year 2 and received the canonical obedience of Bishop Adelulf
of Carlisle. In any case the controversy about the York primacy
would afford an ample subject for discussion, if regard be had
to what transpired at the deposition of St. William and to the
part taken therein by St. Bernard.3
Travelling down the Eden valley as he had done on his first
journey, he left the kingdom of Scotland by crossing the gap
of Stainmore into Yorkshire, but instead of proceeding direct
to York, as he did before, he made a detour perhaps at Barnard
Castle or Catterick that he might call at the monastery of Gisburn
in Cleveland on the east coast near the mouth of the Tees, a
monastery which had been founded by the father of his noble
host at Annan. Departing from Gisburn he came to the sea,
but was refused passage owing, as his biographer suspected,
to some difference between the chief pontiff and King Stephen.
We are not told from what port St. Malachy ultimately set sail.
But inasmuch as the King of England, according to Domesday,4
that King Alexander II. entered Cumberland in 1216 (Chron. de Mailros, pp.
122-3). Archbishop Winchelsey gives some exciting experiences of the passage
when he crossed in 1297 (Wilkins, Concilia, ii. 261-3). Edward I. had his army
encamped on Burgh Marsh on his way north when death overtook him, 1307.
For the importance of this route, see Neilson, Annals of the Solway (Glasgow :
James MacLehose & Sons, 1899). The bogs and mosses which lay between
Annan and the Esk were more impassable than the treacherous sands of
Solway.
1 fto, §69.
2 Priory of Hexham (Surtees Soc.), p. 158. In this same year Henry Fitz
Empress was knighted by King David in Carlisle (Hoveden, R.S., i. 211).
3Newburgh, Chronicon, pp. 47-8, E.H.S.
4 Domesday Book, i. 298 b : ' Rex habet tres vias per terram et quartam per
aquam.' It should be pointed out that Dr. Lawlor (Proceedings of R.I. A. op. cit.
pp. 239-241 : Life of St. Malachy, p. 121) has made an unfortunate slip in his
identification of the Gisburn to which St. Malachy ' turned aside ' (divertit) after
crossing the gap of Stainmore into Yorkshire, a slip which upsets his alleged
geographical direction of the third journey. It is not the Gisburn in Craven near
the Lancashire border, now called New Gisburn, where there was no monastery of
regular canons, but the Gisburn in Cleveland, better known as Guisborough,
82 St. Malachy in Scotland
had in York three ways by land and a fourth by water, it is
not improbable that St. Malachy was making for the fourth
way in the region of York, to escape by the shortest route
from the interference of the English king.
JAMES WILSON.
a priory of regular canons founded by Robert de Brus in 1 129. My view is that
St. Malachy sailed from York, or its immediate neighbourhood, on both of his
outward journeys, and that his itineraries in England, as given by Dr. Lawlor,
must be confined within narrower limits.
Queen Mary's Jewels
A RECENT article in The Scottish Historical Review J con-
tains an interesting reference to Queen Mary's jewels
— more particularly to her pearls — which recalls a secret trans-
action little noticed by historians. This has not escaped the
eye of Dr. Hay Fleming, who gives it a brief mention in his
Mary Queen of Scots,2 and almost sixty years ago it was fully
discussed by Joseph Robertson in his Inventories of Mary Queen
of Scots? but the story will bear elaboration as throwing a useful
light upon the framework of Scottish society in the sixteenth
century, and upon the characters of some of the great person-
ages who graced that period.
The subject is of more than antiquarian interest. When it
is recalled that in the sixteenth century the total revenue of the
Scottish kings was but a few thousand pounds sterling (say
about £12,000), much of which was earmarked for local require-
ments, the importance of the royal jewels is easily appreciated.
Coin was scarce, and, bullion being rare, it was also bad ; and
the monarchs, who were often hard put to it to find the actual
cash for their daily necessities, found an even greater difficulty
in providing for those sudden emergencies which so often
occurred. Hence came the extreme importance of the royal
treasure — wealth in a portable form — which could be easily
transferred into a stronghold when the English came ; which
could be concealed in the bowels of the earth, and yet not
decay ; which could be pledged to pay the mercenaries (main
prop of the crown sometimes) ; and which could be themselves
used, in extremity, to hearten friends or to bribe enemies. The
royal jewels, in fact, were a great asset of government.
During the cruel wars of Mary's minority, great inroads had
sen made upon this asset. Many of the gems went to pay
>r the maintenance of the state, others seem to have been
>propriated by the Hamiltons, and some, in 1556, were sent
1 Vol. xvii. p. 291. 2P. 485. 3Bannatyne, ill.
84 J. Duncan Mackie
to the girl of fourteen, who, though she had lived so long in
France, was none the less Queen of Scotland. But when, a
widow of nineteen, Mary returned to Scotland in 1561, she
brought with her jewels which dazzled even France, and far
surpassed the treasures of her Scottish progenitors. ' Shee
brought with her als faire Jewells, pretious stones and pearles
as were to be found in Europe,' writes Knox,1 who for once is
in accord with Bishop Lesley, and the 'inventory of 1561 '2
is a glittering list of 159 items, necklaces, rings, girdles, ear-
rings, vases and chains, set with gems of every kind. The
jewels of the French Crown, valued at nearly half a million
crowns, had, of course, been returned on the death of her
husband ; but the treasures sent to her from Scotland had
been supplemented by rich gifts from her Guise relatives and
from her royal father-in-law, Henry II., whose great diamond,
with its gold chain and ruby pendant, became, as the ' Great
Harry,' one of the principal treasures of Scotland. The ' grosses
perles,' which figure so abundantly on the list, may have come
from the house of Lorraine ; at all events in Mary's ' testa-
mentary disposition ' of 1566 they are assigned to the families
of Guise and Aumale.
Some of the personal ornaments, obviously, must have travelled
about with the queen, and much of the plate would be housed
in Holyrood ; but the real home of the royal jewels was in
Edinburgh Castle, where they were kept in the Jewel House,
or in the Register House.3 In tracing, therefore, the dispersion
of the gems, which began with Mary's imprisonment in Loch-
leven Castle (iyth June, 1567), it is necessary to study the
varied history of the great citadel.
If we may judge from the rather pitiful inventory of the
goods sent on to the Queen a few days after her escape,4 the
captive must have been deprived of all her treasures save a
bare minimum of plate. Calderwood 5 tells us that on I7th June
' the Lords went down to the Palace of Holyrudhous, and tooke
up an inventar of the plait, Jewells, and other movables,' but
1 Works of John Knox (Woodrow Society), 1846, ii. p. 267.
2 Robertson's Inventories of Mary Queen of Scots, p. 7.
3 Robertson's Inventories, cxxxviii, xiii.
4 Hay Fleming's Mary Queen of Scots, p. 511.
5 Calderwood's History of the Kirk of Scotland (Woodrow Society), 1842, ii.
p. 366.
Queen Mary's Jewels 85
Adam Blackwood x represents the confederates as proceeding
in a less formal manner. According to him, these abominable
traitors busied themselves all night long in pillaging the Queen's
' meubles^ bagues et joyaux' Nothing of value was left by them,
and of what they took little ever returned to the royal house.
So much for Holyrood ; but the Castle was harder to plunder
—for outsiders anyhow — and far more worth the plundering.
The bulk of the royal treasures was still there, and there it was
that Bothwell had bestowed the gems — worth, according to him-
self, more than 20,000 crowns — which Mary had given him.2
The Castle had been held, since 8th May,3 by Sir James Balfour,
a time-serving ruffian, who, having been a great confidant of
Bothwell's at the time of the Darnley murder, was now prepared
to make the highest profit he could out of the new situation.
His opportunities were many. If Randolph's account is correct,4
this trusty custodian, who had the keys of the Register House,
did not hesitate to make free with the valuables entrusted to
his care. At a later date, 1573, Sir Robert Melville seems to
have stated in his examination 5 that he does not know that
Sir James got any ' jowellis ' during the * lait troubles ' ; but the
manuscript is so much damaged that its sense is conjectural,
and in any case, Melville, with a halter round his neck, may
not have cared to incriminate Morton's ally. Randolph cer-
tainly describes the castellan as opening a ' little coffer,' which
may be identical with the famous ' casket,' and that casket itself
was undoubtedly given by him to Bothwell's servants, one of
whom fell into Morton's hands immediately afterwards. From
this luckless wretch, George Dalgleish, information was ex-
tracted by torture ; at 8 p.m. on 2oth June, the casket was
placed in Morton's hand,6 and next day it was broken open in
the presence of eleven Scots lords.
This, of course, is Morton's own story, as presented to the
English commissioners in December 1568, and we need not
accept it as complete or accurate. It is almost certain that
Balfour himself betrayed Dalgleish to Morton, and it is at least
1 Jebb's De vita et rebus gestis Mariae Scotorum Reginae, 1705, ii. p. 219.
2 ' Examination of Sir Robert Melville,' Robertson's Inventories, clviii.
3 Hay Fleming's Mary Queen of Scots, p. 465.
4 Calendars of State Papers, Foreign, Elizabeth, ix. No. 1334.
5 Robertson's Inventories, clviii.
6 Andrew Lang's Mystery of Mary Stuart, p. 275.
86 J. Duncan Mackie
possible that the formal opening of the casket was a solemn
farce. For Balfour had keys, as appears from Randolph's story,
and with his connivance the box could be opened and shut at
will. Certainly the ' murder-band ' does appear to have van-
ished conveniently, and if it went, other things might go too.
At all events, it is quite certain that the casket was for some
time in Morton's hands, for on i6th September, 1568, at a
meeting of the Privy Council, Moray gave him a receipt for
this * silver box owergilt with gold ' and the papers it contained.1
Valuables entrusted to the care of Balfour, therefore, were
likely to meet with adventures, especially if Morton were con-
cerned. Of this Mary was well aware, for in her interview with
Moray at Lochleven on i6th August, 1567, she made her half-
brother custodian of the jewels in a particular manner, alleging
that unless he became responsible, neither she nor her son
would ever see them again.2 Moray — ' good self-denied man,'
as Keith sarcastically remarks — was unwilling to accept the
charge, but Mary was urgent, and as soon as he was gone
wrote with her own hand a letter pressing him to undertake
the matter.
This he did. On the 5th September he made himself master
of Edinburgh Castle,3 driving a hard bargain with Sir James
Balfour, who obtained ' a remissioun as airt and pairt of the
King's murther,' a pension for his son, and for himself the Priory
of Pittenweem and £5000 down.4 On the i ith of the month
Moray is described as making inventories of the Queen's jewels
and apparel, ' which is said to be of much greater value than
she was esteemed to have.' 5 His activities, however, were not
confined to the mere making of lists, but were of a nature to
excite the anger and alarm of his opponents. ' The delivery
of the castle and the jewels to the regent has colded many of
their stomachs,' wrote Mr. James Melville,6 and it is extremely
1 Privy Council Register, i. p. 64. 1 .
2 Catalogue of the Cottonian MSS. in the British Museum, Caligula, Throclcmorton
to Elizabeth, May 20, 1567 (Keith, p. 444).
8 Calderwood's History, ii. p. 387.
*A Diurnal of Remarkable Occurents (Bannatyne Club, No. 43) ; The Historie
and Life of King James the Sext (Bannatyne Club, No. 13, p. 18) ; Spottiswoode's
History of the Church of Scotland, folio edition, 1677, p. 213.
6 Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, Elizabeth, viii. No. 1676.
6 To Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, loth Sept., Calendar of State Papers relating to
Scotland, z vols. 1858, ii. p. 845.
Queen Mary's Jewels 87
probable that even the ' Good Regent ' played the part of the
spoiler on this occasion, although Mary herself believed other-
wise. Certain it is that, on 24th August, Moray's Parliament
made an Act concerning the Queen's 'jowellis,'1 and the
' advices ' which the English government received from Scot-
land on 3 ist August explained that the Regent had been
authorised to ' intromit ' with the jewels.2
Mary had long been apprehensive. On 3Oth May she had
instructed Lord Fleming, who was going to the French court,
to protest against the sale in France of any of her gems,3 which,
as she had heard, were being sent out of Scotland ; and she
seems to have heard of the doings of the Scots Parliament almost
as soon as did her warders, for on the ist of September she wrote
to Elizabeth 4 begging her ' Commander que le reste de mes
bagues ne soyent vandues, comme Us ont ordonne en leur parlemant ;
car vous m'aves promts qtfil ni auroit rien a mon presjudice.' She
added that she wished that Elizabeth had them, for they are
not ' viande propre pour traystres et entre vous et moy je ne fays
nulle deferance? If Elizabeth would take any she fancied as
a gift from her (de ma mayn ou de mon bon gre) she would be
very pleased.
A month later Elizabeth, who, according to her prisoner,
had already made a promise on this very matter, wrote to Moray
advising him not to sell or otherwise dispose of the jewels of
the Queen of Scots, and on 6th October the Regent replied that
he would obey her behest.5 In the course of the investigations
of December 1568, however, Mary's commissioners asserted
that Moray and his allies had ' reft and spuilzeit ' the Queen's
*jewellis,' and after the Regent's murder, Mary herself wrote
to his widow demanding the return of certain jewels, including
the ' Great Harry ' itself, which had come into her possession.6
It does not appear what reply was made, but towards the end
of the year we find the Countess begging, and apparently
receiving, English protection ' in respect of her persecution by
Lord Huntly for the Queen of Scots' jewels.' 7 Huntly, how-
ever, must have had but little success, for throughout the year
1 A.P.S. ii. p. 56. 2 Calendar of State Papers, Scotland, ii. p. 857.
3Labanoff's Lettres de Marie Stuart, 7 vols. 1844, ii. p. 89.
*/&</. ii. p. 172. 5 Calendar of State Papers, Scotland, i. p. z6j.
6 Robertson's Inventories, cxxxii. note 2, March z8th, 1570.
7 Calendar of State Papers, Scotland, i. p. 308.
88 J. Duncan Mackie
1574 Morton was engaged in the same old dispute with the
lady, now Countess of Argyle,1 and only in 1575 did the ' Great
Harry ' return to the royal treasury, where it remained until,
soon after 1603, it was broken up, yielding its great diamond
to complete a still more magnificent jewel, the ' Mirror of Great
Britain.' 2
In this controversy one point of peculiar interest presents
itself. The Countess of Moray plainly used the argument that
the Act of 1568 (which does not survive) gave to the Regent3
' the dispositioun of our said Soverane Lordis jowellis pertening
sumtyme to his Hienes Moder.' The title of this Act of 1568,
however, speaks of the ' Queen's ' jewels, and Mary herself,
at a later date, explicitly stated that Moray had always admitted
that the jewels were hers alone. 'Ainsi qu'il a tousjours plaine-
ment declare devant sa mort^ encore que Morthon luy a souvent
voullu persuader, comme fay este advertie^ de les dissiper, affin
<?en avoir sa part* 4
It is therefore possible that the Countess did not, as Robertson
supposed, receive the jewel as a gift from her lord, but found it
amongst his effects after he was dead, and, being pressed to
return it, made use of the plea — already employed by Morton
himself — that the treasures had become the property of the
young king. The ' Great Harry,' of course, was a French
jewel, but Mary's provisional testament of 1566 had assigned
it to the Scottish crown.5 Be this as it may, it seems certain
that the Good Regent had extracted from the treasures, and
kept in his own possession, certain of the most valuable jewels
— a suspicious circumstance to which we shall return.
His successor, the Earl of Lennox, was also guilty of equivocal
conduct in this affair of the jewels. On 24th November, 1 570,*
Mary wrote to the Bishop of Ross bidding him protest to the
Queen, that the Earl of Lennox ' persumes to spoilze ws of
certane jowellis ' which were in the hands of her followers, and
that he has ' inpresoned ' John Semple for refusing to deliver
up those entrusted to his care. Bannatyne's Memorials 7 amplify
our information by telling us that the valuables in question
were really in the keeping of Semple's wife (Mary Livingstone),
and that Blackness Castle was the place of his captivity.
1 P.C. Reg. ii. p. 330. 2 Robertson's Inventories, cxxxviii.
*P.C. Reg. ii. p. 331 ; Robertson's Inventories, cxxx, Feb. 3, 1574.
4LabanofFs Lettres, iv. p. 91. 5 Robertson's Inventories, p. 93.
6Labanoft's Lettres, iii. pp. 124-5. 7Bannatyne Club, No. 51, p. 348.
Queen Mary's Jewels 89
Most of the royal treasures, meanwhile, were still in Edin-
burgh Castle, and in the custody of Kirkcaldy of Grange, who,
in accordance with a promise to Sir James Balfour,1 had received
the keys from Moray on 24th September, 1 567.2 In the hands
of this champion the Queen's jewels might be considered safe,
but it is evident that even Grange, in the stress of the long
siege, ' intromitted ' somewhat freely with the gems. In May
and August 1 570 he was busy strengthening his defences,3 and
in August the English government ordered the detention of
jewels and valuables sent to be sold in England without Mary's
consent.4 The English, of course, were not always so scrupu-
lous about the rights of their royal captive ; but it was desirable
to prevent Grange from realising his assets. The captive herself,
it is true, grew somewhat apprehensive, for in December she
wrote to Lethington and Grange, stating that she had heard
rumours which she did not believe, ' that ye have appointed
with my meubelles at the Quene of England's procurement,'5
and hoping that if anything of the kind had been done, * it is
rather for my advantage nor otherwise.' Her apprehensions
were not altogether unfounded, for some of her jewels were
sold in France by Grange's brother, James Kirkcaldy.6 But
the money gained (or part of it) was devoted to the purchase of
munitions, and as the castellan held out so long and so gallantly,
in the name of Queen Mary, his action may have been justified.
All that man could do to maintain the defence he did, and
only on 29th May, 1573, when his garrison was mutinous,
when the water was poisoned, and the walls of the castle had,
according to Knox's prophecy, * runne like a sand-glasse,' did
he surrender.7 But, though he gave up his person to the
English commander, Sir William Drury, Marshal of Berwick,
he took care that the castle should be occupied by the Scots,
and Morton hastened to instal as captain his own half-brother,
George Douglas of Parkhead.8 The ' Diurnal ' specifically tells
us 9 that the English force marched off without touching the
1 Memoirs of his own Life. By Sir James Melville of Halhill. Bannatyne Club,
No. 18, p. 198.
* Diurnal of Remarkable Occurents, p. 124. 3 Ibid. pp. 174-184.
4 Calendar of State Papers, Scotland, ii. p. 890.
6LabanofFs Lettres, p. 134.
6 Calderwood's History, iii. p. 74. * Ibid. pp. 211 and 283.
8 Historic of James the Sext, p. 145 ; Melville's Memoirs, p. 255.
9 P. 334-
90 J. Duncan Mackie
royal jewels or the artillery ; but if this was so the conduct of
the commander was less exemplary than that of his men, for
it is quite evident that he secured some of the gems.
In August 1573 we find Morton engaged in a correspondence
with the Countess of Lennox, urging her to procure the restitu-
tion of the gems in the Marshal's possession. Killigrew, in a
letter written about a year later,1 states that these (or perhaps
some of them) had been pledged to Drury for £600, but the
official inventory 2 tells a different story. Some of the jewels
had been handed over by Archibald Douglas, who would surely
have a finger in every pie of doubtful flavour ; others, being out
at pledge, had been returned to Grange when he was a prisoner
in the Marshal's hands, and others again, having been pledged
to Mosman the goldsmith (afterwards hanged along with
Grange) and returned by him when the Castle fell, were cast
by Grange into a coffer in his own room, which coffer after-
wards turned up at Drury's lodging. Grange, who was ex-
amined on 1 3th June,3 denied stoutly that he concealed on his
person the gems returned by Mosman. ' I brought out nothinge
with me, but the clothes was one me, and fower crownes in my
purse, as I will answer to my God.'
This story of the coffer is a little suspicious, however, and it
becomes doubly so when we read in the examination of Sir
Robert Melville 4 that, before the siege, the Marshal ' gat
jowellis fra the Lard (Grange) at sindrie tymes. But quhat they
wer the deponar knawis not.' It would almost seem as if ' that
worthy champion Grange, who perished for being too little
ambitious and greedy,' conscious of Morton's hate, had at the
last minute attempted to come to terms with the English. ' If
Morton gets the jewels,' he may have argued, ' they are lost to
the Queen. May they not, then, buy the life of the Queen's
champion ? ' 5 Vain hope ! Elizabeth would not, in mercy,
baulk her own partisans of their revenge, and though Drury
took the matter heavily, Grange was abandoned to his fate.
Morton was now free to possess himself of the jewels on which
he had long had his eye. The Parliament of January 1573
had authorised him to recover from ' the havaris, resettaris
1 Calendar of State Papers, Scotland, i. p. 386.
2 Robertson's Inventories, cl. *lbid. clii. *lbid. clvii.
5In reading the examinations of the prisoners, however, one gets the impression
that Grange, whose fate at Morton's hands was fairly certain, was made the scape-
goat— even by Sir Robert Melville.
Queen Mary's Jewels 91
sellaris and intromettouris ' the jewels ' sumtyme pertening to
the Quene our Soverane Lordis moder, and pertening to his
hienes sen his coronatioun,'1 and when, on 25th April, the
Castle was formally summoned before the English attack, Grange
had been expressly required to surrender the jewels along with
it.2 Spottiswoode 3 tells us how the Regent ' relieved by pay-
ment of the monys for which they were engaged the jewels
impignorated by the Queen,' but he then goes on to denounce
Morton's rapacity — amply corroborated by the ' Diurnal '4 and
the ' Historic ' 5 — and it is clear that what the Regent claimed
in the name of the King he often put to his own use. Any
' payment of monys ' by him is extremely improbable, if other
means were available; and the Act of 1573 gave him large
discretionary powers which he did not fail to use.
The treasures concealed in the castle, including the famous
' Honours of Scotland,' were rapidly unearthed ; but though
the jewels found ' hydden in a wooden chest in a cave ' were
* many and riche,' the ' moste parte ' were ' in gage,' and Morton
set to work with vigour. The prisoners were closely examined,
as has been shown, and the appearance of Lady Hume before
the council, noted by the contributor of Scots Pearls,* was part
of the same process. Her husband had been one of Grange's
garrison and, at the moment of her interrogation, was an invalid
prisoner in the Castle.7 Grange had pawned some jewels to
her, but according to his own account had redeemed them
and could produce the ' discharge.' Whether all had been re-
deemed is not clear ; if not there is little chance that the lady
ever recovered the j£6oo which had been advanced on the
diamonds and pearls she now surrendered. Lady Lethington
(Mary Fleming) was another victim. She had been taken when
the Castle fell,8 and though we are told by Spottiswoode 9 that
the ' ladies and gentlewomen were licensed to depart,' we find
her on 29th June charged on ' pane of rebellioun ' to produce
certain jewels — notably a chain of diamonds and rubies — which
were in her hands.10 It was but three weeks since her husband
was dead, and to his body Morton refused any burial till the
English Queen made sharp remonstrance ; but none the less
1 ^.P.S. iii. p. 74. 2 Calderwood's History, iii. p. 282.
3 History, folio edition, 1677, P- 273- 4P- 336.
5 P. 147. 6S.//.£. xvii. p. 287.
'July 4, 1573; Reg. P.C. ii. 247. 8 Calderwood's History, iii. p. 283.
. 'P. 272. ™R(g. P.C. ii. p. 246.
92 J. Duncan Mackie
Mary Fleming found courage to resist the inquisitor, and
refused either to produce the jewels entrusted to her, or to
state any cause why she should not. She was given six days'
grace, and the upshot of the affair does not appear.
But if he met with opposition here, Morton was successful
elsewhere. He recovered the gems pawned with the Provost
of Edinburgh,1 and he it was who at length managed to extract
the ' Great Harry ' from the Countess of Argyle. Even from
the English he managed to recover something, so that when,
in 1578, he was deprived of his office, the inventory of the
valuables he gave up ' shows perhaps less wreck than might
have been looked for after ten years of tumult and civil war.'2
It might even appear that Morton, whom Mary regarded as
the arch-traitor, was in a sense the preserver of the royal
treasures, although his efforts, ostensibly made on behalf of
James VI., may have been directed to his own enrichment.
Mary certainly regarded him as her chief enemy, and her
correspondence reveals not only her deep sense of the value of
her jewels, but also the genuine alarm she felt when she heard
that the Castle had fallen at last. On 3rd August, 1573, she
wrote to the French Ambassador, La Mothe Fenelon, begging
him to urge Elizabeth ' affin quelle me fasse rendre mes pierreries
et aultres hardes que favois dans le chasteau de Lislebourgh ' ; 3
and as appears from a letter of 27th September,'4 Elizabeth
had promised to attend to the matter. In November 5 Mary
was once more urging her request. Morton had defended
himself by stating that the gems had been dissipated by previous
castellans (which was true), but the injured Queen expressed the
opinion that he had slain the responsible custodians and taken
possession himself. Her words make it clear that Elizabeth,
who had promised to have the jewels restored to her, had con-
tented herself with writing to the Regent urging that they
should be well guarded until James came of age.
Nothing, therefore, came of this negotiation, and in August
1577 Mary was in touch with the arch-enemy himself. She
distrusted him profoundly ; she even suspected that his over-
tures might be a snare of Walsingham's planning, but none the
less she proposed to follow cautiously the path which had opened
so unexpectedly. Morton's offer might be genuine enough,
for self-interest would compel him to provide against the day
1 Robertson's Inventories, cxxxvi. 2 Ibid, cxxxviii.
3LabanofPs Lettrts, ii. p. 77. 4 Ibid, iv. p. 83. 5 Ibid. iv. pp. 90-91.
Queen Mary's Jewels 93
when James, reaching maturity, should cast him off; even if
it were all deceit, the villain might be caught in his own toils and
induced to write something which would ruin him with Eliza-
beth, and whether his offer were sincere or false, it might be a
means to the recovery of the lost treasures.1
' Quant a mes bagues, qu'il vous envoye ce quit en pourra prompte-
ment recouvrir, ou s'en charge -par inventaire signe de sa main,
et du surplus qui est egare en envoye une declaration, selon la cognois-
sance qu-il en a, et la promesse quil en a faicte*
Morton fell in due course, but the Queen did not recover
her jewels. The inventories taken at Chartley and Fothering-
hay 2 show that, at the end of her life, Mary still had some of
the jewels which figured in the lists of 1561-1566, but these
were probably recovered during her brief spell of liberty in
1568. For the grim Regent was not a man to part with any-
thing of value if he could help it, and in this case the last person
in the world to press him was Elizabeth. Elizabeth herself
was wearing Mary's pearls. Of that there can be no doubt.
In August 1573, when Anglo-Scottish relations were dominated
by Morton's great effort to collect the scattered gems, Alexander
Hay wrote to Killigrew3 that ' some of the jewels have been
recovered by the Regent, but not that piece which was in the
hands of the Queen of England,' and the correspondence of
De La Forest, the French Ambassador in London in 1567-8,
reveals a sordid story,4 which can be amply confirmed from the
calendars of the English State papers.
Early in February 1568, La Forest reported to his master
the arrival in London of one ' Elphinstone ' ' ung gentilhomme
du Conte de Moray,' whose ostensible mission was to explain
the proceedings of the Scottish Parliament which had met on
1 5th December (to condemn Bothwell inter alia). The Ambas-
sador, however, believed that he had other business to negotiate,
and suspected that his real object was to propose a strict alliance,
on terms that Scotland should accept English suzerainty and
Elizabeth should acknowledge James as her heir. A few
months later Elphinstone reappeared upon another errand. On
2nd May La Forest explained to the King that he had come up,
under the protection of Throckmorton, and that he had brought
^Ibid. iv. p. 384; v. p, 28. 2 Ibid. vii. pp. 231-274.
3 Calendar of State Papers, Scotland, i. p. 380.
4 Teulet's Relations Politiques de la Trance et de tEspagne avec I'Ecosse, 5 volss
1862, ii. pp. 339-368 ; LabanofPs Lettres, vii. pp. 129-134.
94 J. Duncan Mackie
with him some magnificent and valuable jewelry belonging to
Queen Mary. This had been inspected by Elizabeth on ist
May, in the presence of Pembroke and Leicester, who had been
astonished at the beauty of the gems. Writing on the same day
to Catherine de Me"dicis, the Ambassador added that he knew
neither the ' quality nor the quantity ' of the jewels, though he
knew they were highly valued. He thought that, if Catherine
wished to buy all or some, it could be managed, for though
Elizabeth would have the first option, he thought she was too
cautious to buy. There was no need for haste, he concluded,
for the affair was being kept very secret. The fact is that the
Queen Mother had told De La Forest to keep a look-out for these
jewels, but that he himself was not anxious to meddle in the
matter, for in a third letter which he wrote on 2nd May (to
M. de Fizes, Secretaire d'Estat), he explained that he had
written to the Queen Mother only in consequence of her in-
structions to him ; if anything was to be done, he should be told
as soon as possible, but he added, ' Nous avons assez affaire de
nostre argent ailleurs.'
A few days later (8th May), De La Forest was able to
give more detailed information. Amongst the jewels sent
were the ' grosses •perles ' about which Catherine had formerly
enquired, and as he had heard ' il y en a six cordons ou elles sont
enfilees comme patenostres, et oultre cela, environ vingt-cinq a part et
separees les unes des au/tres.' These separate pearls, he added,
were bigger and finer than those on the threads, ' most of them
as big as nutmegs.' They had been variously valued at 10,000,
12,000 and even 16,000 crowns, but his own opinion was that
they would go at the middle figure. He was correct, for a
week later he wrote announcing that the transaction was com-
plete. Elizabeth had bought her dear cousin's pearls for
12,000 crowns, or ^3600 sterling.
The Queen Mother made the best of her disappointment.
On receipt of the Ambassador's earlier letters she had written
to bid him buy if he could, but apparently before her letter
was despatched the news came that Elizabeth had forestalled
her (2 ist May). Accordingly she submitted gracefully. It was
very reasonable that Elizabeth should have the pearls, she would
like her to buy all the jewels ' et, si je les avoiz, je les luy
envoierois.' Sour grapes, your Majesty ! If you cannot have
the pearls you do not want anything else.
The Ambassador's story is correct in almost every detail,
Queen Mary's Jewels 95
and indeed it might well be. For he had corrupted a secretary
of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, who always played a great part
in Scottish affairs, and under whose patronage Elphinstone had
been introduced.1 Thus possessed of inside information, he
was able to prime the ' Sieur de Bethon,' who visited Elizabeth
en route from Scotland to France, so effectually that, in the
course of an interview, Beaton managed to get the Queen to
make an admission about the jewels. All this, of course, rests
on his own statement, but his story is strongly corroborated by
circumstantial evidence.
He represents the sending of Elphinstone as very secret,
and in point of fact there is no reference to his mission in the
contemporary histories. Calderwood, Sir James Melville, the
' Diurnal,' the ' History ' and Spottiswoode (hardly contem-
porary of course) are all silent in the matter. And this silence
becomes all the more remarkable when we find frequent refer-
ences to the French Ambassador Beaumont, who came north
just as Elphinstone came south, and who (says De La Forest)
actually met him ten leagues north of Berwick.2 But if the
histories are silent, the State Papers have much to tell us.
Nicoll Elphinstone — not ' Lord ' Elphinstone, as Teulet has it
—was the trusted servant of Moray who was sent on to herald
his return to Scotland in July i$6*j? Early in January 1568
he received from Moray letters of credit to the Queen and Cecil,4
and on 3ist January he had arrived in London and been heard
by certain of the Council.5 All this tallies exactly with the
French Ambassador's account of his first mission ; and his
version of the second is confirmed with equal precision.
On 2oth April Elphinstone received from the Regent, then
at Glasgow, a fresh letter of credit to Cecil,6 and on 22nd April
he arrived at Berwick.7 Now Beaumont had arrived in Berwick
on the 2 ist and had gone on at once,8 so that the envoys would
meet just about ten leagues north of Berwick, just as De La
Forest said. Other documents in the same series 9 make it
1Teulet's Relations Tolitiques, ii. p. 362. 2LabanofPs Lfttres, vii. p. 130.
3 Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, Elizabeth, viii. No. 1459 anc^ No. 1470.
*lbid. Nos. 1907, 1908. *Ibid. No. 1975.
6 Ibid. No. 2 1 3 6. 7 ibid. No. 2 1 3 8 .
8Teulet's Relations Politiques, ii. p. 351.
9 Calendars of State Papers, Foreign, Elizabeth, viii. Nos. 2160, 2233, 2246,
2260.
g6 j. Duncan Mackie
clear that Elphinstone's official business was the settlement of
the borders. An affair of this kind, however, did not neces-
sarily involve a visit to London — the emissary, in point of fact,
did visit Carlisle as well as Berwick — and certainly it did not
require the secrecy which veiled the whole business. This was
very complete. La Forest, as has been shown, was well-in-
formed ; yet even he wrote as if the jewels were still for sale
on 8th May, whereas Elphinstone had concluded his business
some days earlier. The news of Mary's escape had reached
London, and Elizabeth, who was preparing congratulatory letters
to her dear cousin, eased her conscience by dispatching Moray's
envoy with a meanness which disgusted Throckmorton.1
Was Moray, then, the vendor of the pearls ? Elphinstone
was undoubtedly his servant; indeed, as early as 1565, a con-
fidential servant.2 He is always described as Moray's man,
and it was from Moray that he got his letters of credit. Now
Moray was notoriously poor. His reliance on English gold
in 1565 has been made a perpetual reproach to him,3 and at
this period 4 he was apparently in his usual penury. At this
time, however, he received authority to handle the Queen's
jewels, and the affair of the ' Great Harry ' shows that he inter-
preted his powers somewhat widely. Without opportunity, of
course, authority might avail little, but, as has been shown, he
had opportunity enough between 5th September, when Balfour
surrendered the Castle, and 24th September, when Grange
was installed. The natural conclusion is that he secured,
amongst other valuables, Queen Mary's pearls, which he wished
to sell in order to provide himself with cash. Elphinstone may
have broached the subject on his first journey south (else why
the secrecy ?), or it may have been broached to him ; and on his
second journey he took the jewels with him.
Moray's action may be justified on the ground of necessity.
His business was to govern Scotland, and to govern without
money was impossible. If, however, it be felt that defence is
required, one line alone presents itself. Elphinstone was also
the confidant of Morton,5 and indeed he was, some years later,
1Teulet's Relations Politiques, ii. p. 357.
2 Calendars of State Papers, Scotland, i. p. 215.
3 Ibid. i. 225, 227.
4 Calendars of State Papers, Foreign, Elizabeth, viii. No. 1732.
5 Calderwood's History, iii. p. 387 ; Melville's Memoirs, p. 263.
Queen Mary's Jewels 97
actually employed on the * great matter ' of having Mary sent
secretly to Scotland for execution.1
Is it possible, then, that the * Good Regent ' sent Elphinstone
south on purely diplomatic business, and that the wicked Morton
seized the opportunity to dispose of the jewels, the fruits of his
guilty collusion with Balfour ? Surely this is special pleading.
Elphinstone's connection with Morton seems to have become
intimate only after Moray's death, and the whole circumstances
of the mission, its swiftness, its secrecy and the connivance
of Throckmorton, all seem to prove that the Regent himself
was the principal in the business.
Mary, then, was deceived when she regarded her half-brother
as a safe custodian of her jewels ; no less was she deceived when
she appealed to Elizabeth for aid ; but most of all was she
deceived as to herself. There she was, poor prisoner, imagin-
ing that she was still the great pivot of politics, and that her
jewels were too sacred to be touched, whereas even her friends
were constrained to despoil her, and her importance in the
diplomatic world grew steadily less. It was only after she was
out of the way that the ' Armada ' came. In her prison then
we must leave her, and for the prison's sake we may forgive her
some dishonesty, some selfishness, and a certain megalomania ;
but what are we to think of the Queen who promised to help
to recover her treasures, and who actually wrote to Moray and
to Morton about the stolen goods when she herself was some-
thing very like a ' resettar ' ?
What exactly were the jewels which Elizabeth got ? Refer-
ence has already been made to the ' grosse perlesj which certainly
accompanied Mary from France, and which were assigned, in
the arrangement of 1566, to the houses of Guise and Aumale.
It was probably some of these which Elizabeth bought, for
Catherine de Medicis was plainly acquainted with the pearls in
question. De La Forest's description undoubtedly suggests
the * grosse -perks enfilkes ' of the 1566 inventory. Further than
this it is hard to go, for by the time the Ambassador's informant
saw the jewels, the original pieces may have been broken up.
Three of Mary's resplendent ornaments were in themselves
sufficient to supply over 1 50 great pearls, a girdle, a ' cottouere '
or ' edging ' or ' beading,' and a ' dizain,' or rope with the pearls
divided into tens. De La Forest's reference to a paternoster
might perhaps suggest the ' dizain ' — the big beads which divided
1Tytler's History of Scotland, 9 vols. 1841, vii. pp. 314, 321, 336.
98 Queen Mary's Jewels
the groups of ten were called ' pater ' — but very possibly all he
meant was that the pearls were strung.
None of the ornaments mentioned in the inventory seem to
have been in ' six cordons,' and in any case, Elizabeth, whose
common-sense was more highly developed than her sense of
honour, would probably break the pieces up at once if they were
intact when she got them. Hay's letter, it is true, does seem to
speak of one particular ' piece,' but I have tried in vain to draw
conclusions from a comparison of the authentic pictures of the
two Queens. Gloriana is, as a rule, so thickly encrusted with
gems, that accurate observation seems to be impossible.
J. DUNCAN MACKIE.
Early Orkney Rentals in Scots Money or
in Sterling
IN examining the earliest of Peterkin's Rentals of the County
of Orkney recently, a somewhat surprising circumstance
came to light. The rental in question is that of Henry Lord
Sinclair (' that deit at Flowdin ') for the years 1 502-03, com-
piled immediately after he had obtained a fresh lease from the
Crown of the lordships of Orkney and Shetland. In the summa
at the end of each parish the money values of the total rents
and duties are given, and one would naturally suppose that these
would be expressed in Scots money. This was the assumption
explicitly made by Captain Thomas in his otherwise very acute
and exhaustive account of this rental, published in the Proceed-
ings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland for 1883-84 ;
and, so far as I am aware, he has been followed by any other
writers who have touched upon the subject.
Actually, however, when the rental is closely examined there
can be no doubt at all that the conversions are expressed in
sterling money, and this completely alters estimates of Orkney
rents and taxation at that period. Some of the clearest pieces
of evidence may be briefly summarized.
i. A comparison of the rent, in Scots money, which Lord
Sinclair paid for his lease (see Exchequer Rolls']^ with its returns
as disclosed in his rentals, show that if those returns were
expressed in Scots money also, he would have been a heavy
loser by the transaction ; but as some of the factors are a little
uncertain (such as his returns from Shetland), we may confine
ourselves here to the consideration of a single item — the rent
of Burray. For this island £20 Scots was paid by the Bishop
of Orkney to the Crown and allowed to Lord Sinclair in the
account, while the entire total of rents and duties given in the
rental was jC i o 1 2/ 1 1 J.1 If this £10 12/11^ were Scots money
1 Misprinted 35^41 12/11^ in Peterkin. £10 12/1 ij is the actual value of
the rents given in kind, and is the figure in the 1492 Rental.
ioo J. Storer Clouston
the tacksman was actually paying nearly twice as much as he got
from the island. So it clearly must have been sterling.
2. The lowest conversion price of Orkney beir given in the
Exchequer Rolls between the years 1476 and 1509 was 4/2
Scots per boll. Sixteen bolls made a chalder, and 36 Orkney
meils of beir also made a chalder. The lowest recorded price
of a meil of Orkney beir in these Rolls was therefore i/io
Scots, .or a trifle over 6d. sterling. The standard Orkney price
both in the 1492 and 1502-03 rentals was 4d., which therefore
must obviously have been sterling money. It may be added that
this difference between 4d. and 6d. (in some years i/-) shows
that money was dear and prices low in Orkney compared with
Scotland.
3. The purchase price of an Orkney merkland at that time
was one merk (13/4) ' Inglis ' — i.e. sterling. But the standard
rent was 10 settens of malt, equal to rod. in rental money. If
this money were Scots, then Orkney land must have been selling
at over 53 years' purchase ! This, of course, is a preposterous
rate ; lod. sterling gives 16 years' purchase, and the ' 5th part
fall ' very commonly found in the 1502-03 rental (where most
rents were down) gives the normal rate of 20 years.
4. In this old rental we find Sir William Sinclair of Warsetter,
Lord Sinclair's brother, getting a tack of I3d. land in Tuquoy
in Westray for ' thre pundis Scottis payment allanerlie ' (only),
in place of the duties and old rent. The ' allanerlie ' of course
implies a reduction, and in point of fact all Sir William's tacks
were given him at much reduced rents. But the duties came to
14/1, and the old rent to j£i i6/- according to this rental, and
j£i 197- according to the 1492 rental. The previous total pay-
ment was thus either £2 io/ 1 or £2 13/1, so that if this had been
Scots money, Sir William would have been paying a consider-
ably enhanced rent. It must therefore have been sterling.
Several other cases of payments may be noted, in which the
currency must have been Scots, in contradistinction to the
usual currency of the rental, especially where ' fees ' are men-
tioned. Thus William ' Swoundyis ' got the ' grassum ' of
Brek in Deerness ' ilk 3 year 2o/- in his fee ' : 2o/- at the rental
conversion rate meant 40 meils of grassum every three years,
and as he only paid 20 meils in annual rent, such an exorbitant
extra is obviously impossible. The 2o/- was plainly Scots money.
One final instance is particularly instructive and conclusive.
The whole rent and duties of Tofts in St. Ola were ' assignit
Early Orkney Rentals 101
for 2o/- in Angus Portaris fee yeirlie.' The value of these duties
and rent was 5/53- in rental money, and thus this sum was
equivalent to 2o/- in the currency of Angus Porter's fee. The
ratio of the two currencies works out at 3*6 to I, and that is the
exact ratio of sterling to Scots money in 1503.
Curious though it seems at first sight that a Scottish nobleman's
rental should be expressed in sterling money, especially when
his accounts with the Crown for the same lands were all in Scots
currency, the explanation is really not far to seek. Orkney
had only comparatively recently (in 1468) come under the Scottish
Crown, and before that date sterling money was the currency
generally used, as is shown by the one earlier document where
many details of Orkney affairs are given : the ' Complaint ' of
1424 or 1425. Many fines and the value of a number of articles
are specified, and each time they are expressed in sterling money.
Among these items is one that amply confirms the rental
values as being sterling : David Menzies, governor of the
islands and factor for the young earl, is stated to have ' collected
(for his own benefit) out of the earl's rents . . . 800 pounds
English since his father died and a year before he died.' The
maximum time covered was six years, which gives an average of
£133 6/8d. sterling a year ; and Menzies cannot have had the
audacity to pocket the whole rents. Actually the total rent in
1502-03, allowing for parishes omitted and items not entered
in the parish tackmen's accounts, works out about £200 a year —
probably rather less. So that this £200 could not possibly
have been Scots money. In fact, it is clear that the lost ancient
rentals of Orkney must have been in sterling money, and hence
the same currency was retained throughout Lord Sinclair's
leases.
J. STORER CLOUSTON.
James Boswell as Essayist1
IN speaking of James Boswell in the role of Essayist, I take
as my text a collection of seventy essays contributed by
him to the London Magazine from October 1777 to July 1783,
a period of five years and nine months. They are now almost
forgotten and not easy to obtain ; early numbers of the magazine
in which they lie buried are scarce ; so scarce indeed, that as far
as I can discover, complete sets are possessed by few public
libraries. It is not, however, on account of their rarity that
I venture to bring them again into the light ; a work may be
rare and yet the lawful prey of Oblivion : it is rather, because I
see in them new material for the study of Boswell the man and
of his magnum opus — material which has been neglected by critics,
hostile and friendly alike.
Although published anonymously, with the whimsical title
The Hypochondriack, there is no question about the authorship.
Boswell himself, in a letter still extant, sent a copy of his ninth
paper to his friend Sir Alexander Dick of Prestonfield, inviting
criticism; to his bosom friend Temple on 4th January, 1780,
he wrote : ' I really think my Hypochondriack goes on wonder-
fully well' ; and in the Life of Johnson there is explicit acknow-
ledgment : ' I told him I should send him some essays which
I had written which I hoped he would be so good as to read and
pick out the good ones. Johnson : Nay Sir, send me only the
good ones ; dont make me pick them.'
The essays are written, I need hardly say, on the approved
eighteenth century essay model : each has its motto from Greek
or Latin author : all deal with hackneyed subjects, Fear,
Excess, Luxury, Melancholy, Praise and Censure, Government,
Dedications, and the like, round which hundreds of essays had
been written long before Boswell took up his pen to swell the
number. Sometimes a theme runs into three papers ; that is so
1 Read before the English Association (Glasgow Centre), February i5th,
1919.
James Boswell as Essayist 103
in the case of Love, Marriage, Death, Country and Town Life,
while Drinking has four to itself. Four, written earlier than 1777,
have been introduced into the series evidently at times when the
printer was clamant for copy. They are only interesting as
showing that while a mere youth the author had an ambition
to enter the lists as an essayist and that occasionally he had
contributed to the London Advertiser. One of these (number
X of the series) opens thus : ' My scheme of writing a periodical
paper, entitled The Hypochondriack, was formed a good many
years ago, while I was travelling upon the continent ; and in the
eagerness of realising it and seeing how it would do, I sat down
one evening at Milan and wrote The Hypochondriack No. X,
pleasing myself with the fancy that I was so far advanced, and
with the enthusiasm which critics ascribe to epic bards, ' plung-
ing at once into the middle of things.' That essay was hastily
composed in a gay flow of spirits thirteen years ago and I shall
present it to my readers as my tenth number without making
any variation whatever upon it ' : — a characteristic Boswellian
confidence.
My difficulty has been to decide how best to present these
forgotten essays to a new audience. When one starts off to
read them for the first time they appear to be little more than an
ambitious attempt to produce a work on the lines of the Rambler.
That book of Johnson's, as one should expect, was the exemplar,
and some things gravely uttered by Boswell are reminiscent of
it. But the echoes are only occasional, and long before the
seventieth essay has been reached, the peculiar personal note of
the Biographer, which never fails as passport to indulgent
attention, will have discovered itself even to the most cursory of
readers. The literary quality of the essays is fine, as might
easily be exemplified by selected passages : in them we become
acquainted with his thoughts, moods, and ambitions ; with his
eager interest and restless curiosity in life and notably also with
some of his methods in striving to attain to literary craftsmanship.
He puts something of himself into all his counsels, and freshens
up his subject by racy anecdotes, illustrations and quotations.
But unless I am mistaken the documentary value exceeds the
literary, and for my present purpose at any rate will call for
most attention.
In October 1777, when the first essay made its appearance,
Boswell was verging on thirty-eight years of age. In verse and
prose he had practised his pen assiduously from boyhood, and
104 J. T. T. Brown
published freely, though nearly always anonymously, but his one
serious contribution to literature, as yet, had been the Journal
of a Tour to Corsica. In turning now to essay-writing it was not,
I feel sure, with any expectation that thereby he would increase
his literary reputation. In 1763, or soon after, he had deliber-
ately chosen as his task, biography, with Johnson as subject, and
ever since had pursued it steadily. His Corsican Journal,
particularly the second part, the parleyings with Paoli, was an
experiment in method, a preparation for the achievement of the
masterpiece at which he secretly aimed. What then was the
purpose of the Essays ? His contemporaries, except perhaps
his friend Temple, could not have answered that question, for
the answer was involved in what Carlyle calls Boswell's ' great
secret.' Ostensibly they were written for the author's pleasure
and to entertain readers, the pretended aim of every author since
books began to be written. Let me quote a short passage from
the prefatory essay :
' To undertake the writing of a large book is like entering on a long and
difficult journey, in the course of which much fatigue and uneasiness must
be undergone, while at the same time one is uncertain of reaching the end
of it ; whereas writing a short essay is like taking a pleasant airing that
enlivens and invigorates by the exercise which it yields while the design is
gratified in its completion. Men of the greatest parts and application are
at times averse to labour for any continuance, and could they not employ
their pens on lighter pieces, would at those times remain in total inactivity.
Writing such essays therefore, may fill up the interstices of their lives and
occupy moments which would otherwise be lost. To other men who have
not yet attained to any considerable degree of constancy in application, the
writing of periodical essays may serve to strengthen their faculties and
prepare them for the execution of more important works.'
To Boswell himself these words had a fuller meaning than to
any of his readers. The fact is that in 1777 his life-task for the
time was at a stop through no fault of his own ; and being
unwilling to remain inactive he was now wishful to fill up an
interstice in his own life, strengthen his faculties, and prepare
for the execution of a more important work. Although the
world did not know it, his own Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
was already prepared for the press and was only held back for
the reason that he did not wish to offend Johnson. The famous
trip had been discussed between him and Johnson in the first
year of their acquaintance; it was accomplished in 1773, and
two years later worthily narrated in Johnson's Account of a
Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. But to that work
James Boswell as Essayist 105
Boswell had always desired to write what he called a Supplement.
During the trip he had kept a diary, as his custom was, of which
Johnson in one of his letters to Mrs. Thrale says : ' Boswell
writes a regular journal of our travels which I think contains as
much of what I say and do as of all other occurrences together.'
From the Journal itself, as published, we know now that Johnson
frequently perused it : * He came to my room this morning
before breakfast to read my Journal, which he had done all
along. He often before said, ' I take great delight in reading
it.' To-day he said, ' You improve : it grows better and better.'
I observed, there was a danger of my getting a habit of writing
in a slovenly manner. ' Sir, said he, it is not written in a slovenly
manner. It might be printed, were the subject fit for printing.' '
And in two letters to Temple we discover the reason for the book
being withheld. On May loth, 1775, Boswell writes : ' I have
not written out another line of my remarks on the Hebrides.
I found it impossible to do it in London. Besides, Dr. Johnson
does not seem very desirous I should publish any Supplement.
Between ourselves he is not apt to encourage one to share repu-
tation with himself. But dont you think I may write out my
remarks in Scotland and send them to be revised by you, and
then they may be published freely ? Give me your opinion of
this.' And on November 6th, 1775, he writes : ' Dr. Johnson
has said nothing to me of my remarks during my journey with
him, which I wish to write. Shall I task myself to write so much
of them a week and send to you for revisal ? If I dont publish
them now they will be good materials for my Life of Johnson'
That last sentence explains much. The Journal of a Tour to
the Hebrides, the most finished kit-kat portrait in our literature,
was intended to be the first instalment of the magnum opus, but
could not be published during Johnson's lifetime and in conse-
quence might even need to be recast when the second instalment,
the Life of Johnson, the full length portrait, came to be executed.
Fortunately the Hebridean Journal has reached us in its
original form ; and no editor, with Mr. Croker before his eyes,
is ever likely to have the temerity to attempt to foist it into the
text of the Life of Johnson.
Seeing now that the Essays were written after the completion
of the first instalment of the Biography, and during what looks
like a period of enforced suspension of the life task, it has still to
be shown that in writing them Boswell was sharpening his pencil
and preparing for the execution of something more important —
io6 J. T. T. Brown
the great Life of Johnson. All the papers, with the exception of
the four early ones already mentioned, were, in my opinion,
written mainly with the object of clarifying his mind on points
discussed between him and Johnson during the fourteen years
of their acquaintance, and were in great part derived from and
suggested by the Journals and note books containing the memo-
randa of these discussions. When read collectively and with the
Life of Johnson steadily kept in view, that, I believe, will be ad-
mitted by all readers. As every one knows, a very considerable
part of the Biography is made up of Johnson's observations on
what are called commonplace subjects : many of them subjects
treated by him in the Rambler, Idler, or other occasional papers.
One has only to glance at the full index compiled by Dr. Birkbeck
Hill to realise that. But in the Biography, as Mr. Augustine
Birrell remarks, Johnson's ' recorded utterances cannot be
reconciled with any one view of anything When crossed in
conversation or goaded by folly he was capable of anything ' ;
and no one knew it better than his Biographer, whose gentle
demurrers from many of the magisterial dicta have been so
cunningly introduced into the text. To attempt to show in
detail the relation of the essays to the Biography is impossible,
within the limits at my disposal, and for that reason a few examples
culled from the essays, must suffice, which, if they do not demon-
strate, will at least suggest what I mean by relation. In some
of the passages I shall also try to indicate the biographical value
of the essays and to communicate something of the Boswellian
flavour. A more enjoyable hour perhaps might be spent in
discussing the purely literary merits of the essays ; but at present
I am directing attention almost exclusively to their value as fresh
material for the study of Boswell and the Life of Johnson, his
great achievement in the field of biography.
I begin with the essay on Diaries (number LXVI of the series).
* The ancient precept yvwdi treavrov — ' know thyself,' which by some
is ascribed to Pythagoras, and by others is so venerated as to be supposed
one of the sacred responses of the Oracle at Delphos, cannot be so perfectly
obeyed without the assistance of a register of one's life. For memory is so
frail and variable, and so apt to be disturbed and confused by the perpetual
succession of external objects and mental operations, that if our situation be
not limited indeed, it is very necessary to have our thoughts and actions
preserved in a mode not subject to change, if we would have a fair and
distinct view of our character.
4 This consideration joined with 'the importance of a man to himself
has had some effect in all times. . . . 'The importance of a man to himself
James Boswell as Essayist 107
simply considered is not a subject of ridicule, for in reality a man is of more
importance to himself than all other things or persons can be. The ridicule
is, when self importance is obtruded upon others to whom the private
concerns of an individual are quite insignificant. A diary therefore . . . may
be of valuable use to the person who writes it, and yet if brought forth to
the public eye may expose him to contempt, unless in the estimation of the
few who think much and minutely, and therefore know well of what little
parts the principal extent of human existence is composed.'
Quoting Lord Bacon, 'It is a strange thing that in sea
voyages, where there is nothing to be seen but sky and sea, men
should make diaries ; but in land travel, where so much is to be
observed, for the most part they omit it, as if chance were fitter
to be registered than observation,' he proceeds to tell of a
visit made by him to India House for the sole purpose of exam-
ining the journals, the log-books as we should say, kept by
captains of the company's ships. Then coming back to his
main theme he says :
* But it is a work of very great labour and difficulty to keep a journal of
life, occupied in various pursuits, mingled with concomitant speculations
and reflections, in so much, that I do not think it possible to do it unless
one has a talent for abridging. I have tried it in that way, when it has
been my good fortune to live in a multiplicity of instructive and entertaining
scenes, and I have thought my notes like portable soup, of which a little
bit by being dissolved in water will make a good large dish ; for their sub-
stance by being expanded in words would fill a volume.1 Sometimes it has
occurred to me that a man should not live more than he can record, as a
farmer should not have a larger crop than he can gather in. And I have
regretted that there is no invention for getting an immediate and exact
transcript of the mind, like that instrument by which a copy of a letter is at
once taken off.' . . .
' The chief objection against keeping a diary fairly registered with the
state of mind and the little occurrences by which we are intimately affected
is, the danger of its falling into the hands of other people, who may make
use of it to our prejudice. ... I have kept a Diary for considerable portions
of my life. And in order to guard against detection of what I wish to
be concealed, I once wrote parts of it in a character of my own invention,
by way of a cypher, but having given over the practice for several years, I
forgot my alphabet, so that all that is written in it must for ever remain as
unintelligible to myself as others. This was merely a loss. But a much
worse circumstance happened. I left a large parcel of diary in Holland to
1 In Dr. Johnson His Friends and His Critics, p. 190, Dr. Birkbeck Hill discusses
two questions (i) ' How much of Johnson's reported conversation is his own and
how much Boswell's?' and (2) 'Whenever Boswell pretends to give Johnson's
exact words, does he, even though he omits a great deal, show in what he gives,
the literal accuracy of a shorthand reporter ? ' Boswell's explicit statement in the
Essays has escaped the notice of all commentators.
io8 J. T. T. Brown
be sent after me to Britain with other papers. It was fairly written out
and contained many things which I should be very sorry to have communi-
cated except to my most intimate friends ; the packages having been
loosened, some of the other papers were chafed and spoiled with water, but
the Diary was missing. I was sadly vexed, and felt as if a part of my vitals
had been separated from me, and all the consolation I received from a very
good friend, to whom I wrote in the most earnest anxiety to make enquiry
if it could be found anywhere, was that he could discover no trace of it,
though he had made diligent search in all the little houses, so trifling did it
appear to him. I comfort myself with supposing that it has been totally
destroyed in the carrying. For, indeed, it is a strange disagreeable thought,
that what may be properly enough called so much of one's mind, should
be in the possession of a stranger, or perhaps of an enemy.'
Then after remarking that a diary will afford the most authentic
materials for writing a biography which, ' if the subject be at all
eminent, will always be an acceptable addition to literature,' he
goes on :
' 1 was lately reading the Diary of that illustrious and much injured
prelate Archbishop Laud, which the violent and oppressive rage of rebellion
dragged forth as part of the evidence against him. It is estimable not only
for the fragments which it contains of important history, but for the tender,
humane, and pious sentiments which it undeniably proves were the constant
current of his mind.'
Then he gives a few specimen entries. Laud's Diary he
contrasts with another, and this for my present purpose, is the
most important thing in the essay.
' There is,' he says, ' a Diary of a very different character called a Spiritual
Diary and Soliloquies, by John Rutty, M.D., published in two volumes
quarto. In the Critical Review for March 1777 there is an account of
this singular curious work, introduced with some observations so good, that
in justice both to the writer of them and my readers I cannot but transcribe
them. [Then follows the quotation.] Dr. Rutty was an Irish physician
of merit and one of the people called Quakers. His diary is written
with an honest simplicity and conscientious self examination which are
rarely to be found, so that while we cannot but laugh, we must feel
a charitable regard for him.' [Then nine specimens of the entries are
given.]
That diary of Dr. Rutty is now among the books that are no
books, but his name and the fact that he was a diarist will be
remembered as long as English is spoken, for that whole passage
is transferred to the Life of Johnson (anno 1777 ; vol. Hi. p. 197
Napier's edition).
* He was much diverted with an article which I shewed him in the
Critical Review of this year, giving an account of a curious publication^
James Boswell as Essayist 109
entitled 'A Spiritual Diary and Soliloquies' by John Rutty, M.D.
Dr. Rutty was one of the people called Quakers, a physician of some
eminence in Dublin and author of several works. This Diary which was
kept from 1753 to 1775, the year in which he died, and was now published
in two volumes octavo, exhibited, in the simplicity of his heart, a minute
and honest register of the state of his mind ; which, though frequently
laughable enough, was not more so than the history of many men would
be, if recorded with equal fairness. The following specimens were extracted
by the reviewers.' [Then they follow.] 'Johnson laughed heartily at
this good Quietist's self condemning minutes ; particularly at his mention-
ing, with such a serious regret, occasional instances of swinishness in eating,
and doggedness of temper. He thought the observations of the Critical
Reviewers upon the importance of a man to himself so ingenious and so
well expressed that I shall here introduce them.' [Then follows the cita-
tion, the same as in the essay.]
In the Biography, Boswell has corrected quarto to octavo,
added a few dates, and slightly polished his periods here and
there. But he has also lifted from another part of the essay the
phrase ' the importance of a man to himself,' showing that his
' lucubrations,' as he styled the essays, were used in the prepara-
tion of the final text of the Life of Johnson.
Another excellent essay, ' Conversation among Intimates,'
(number XXV of the series) is brought to a conclusion in charac-
teristic fashion :
'There is, no doubt, as the wise man tells us, 'a time for all things,' and
while I am inculcating gay relaxation with the same earnestness which is
generally employed in inculcating grave assiduity I do most certainly not
mean to recommend relaxation at random. The Roman poet says, duke est
desipere in loco, it is agreeable to play the fool in a proper place, or to express it
fully in the English idiom, time and place convenient. I would add to time
and place, convenientia personae, something suitable to character. For, the
relaxation of one person should be very different from the relaxation of
another. I would not have a judge give way to an impulse of animal
spirits, and be a merry fellow while he is upon the bench, nor would I
have him dance in a public assembly room ; and indeed a person of that
grave dignity of station should be seen in his hour of amusement but by
very few, as there are very few who can distinguish the substantial general
character itself from the occasional appearances which it assumes. Still
more should a clergyman be upon his guard against having the most
innocent levity of behaviour in him, seen by others. For as the usefulness
of his office depends much upon the weight of authority which opinion
gives him it is his duty to take care that that opinion be not lessened.
Levity of behaviour in him, if not in excess, is clearly no evil in respect to
himself only, and therefore he may indulge it in private. But it is an evil
in respect to others, in whose imaginations the venerable impression of the
sacred character must not be at all effaced. There is a noted story that Dr.
no J. T. T. Brown
Clarke, the celebrated metaphysician, and one or two more eminent men of
his time, were diverting themselves quite in a playful manner ; but when
Clarke perceived a certain beau approaching, he instantly made a transition
to composed decorum, calling out with admirable good sense, * Come, my
boys, let's be grave, there comes a fool.' There cannot be a better illustra-
tion than this of my opinion as to the prudent conduct of relaxation with
due discernment as to those before whom a man of respectable character
should give a loose to it.'
Now, as is well known, when the Hebridean Journal was
published the author was subjected to so much abuse and ridicule
for the figure he himself cut in the book, that he felt it necessary
in the splendid dedication to Sir Joshua Reynolds of the Life
of Johnson to take notice of the sour critics. This short passage
from that dedication is another example of relation.
* In one respect, this work will in some passages be different from the
former. In my 'Tour' I was almost unboundedly open in my communi-
cations ; and from my eagerness to display the wonderful fertility and
readiness of Johnson's wit, freely shewed to the world its dexterity, even
when I was myself the object of it. I trusted that I should be liberally
understood, as knowing very well what I was about, and by no means as
simply unconscious of the pointed effects of the satire. I own indeed, that
I was arrogant enough to suppose that the tenor of the rest of the book
would sufficiently guard me against such a strange imputation. But it
seems I judged too well of the world ; for though I could scarcely believe
it, I have been undoubtedly informed, that many persons, especially in
distant quarters, not penetrating enough into Johnson's character, so as to
understand his mode of treating his friends, have arraigned my judgment,
instead of seeing that I was sensible of all that they could observe.
* It is related of the great Dr. Clarke, that when in one of his leisure hours
he was unbending himself with a few friends in the most playful and frolic-
some manner, he observed Beau Nash approaching ; upon which he
suddenly stopped. ' My boys,' said he, * let us be grave, here comes a fool.'
The world, my friend, I have found to be a great fool as to that particular on
which it has become necessary to speak very plainly. I have therefore in
this work been more reserved ; and though I tell nothing but the truth, I
have still kept in my mind that the whole truth is not always to be
exposed.'
For the anecdote so aptly used in his own defence Boswell
turned to one of his essays, improving it by slightly condensing it.
To avoid a tedious minuteness I shall now group together a
few more illustrations which will not require such lengthy
citations and comparisons. Let me begin with the minor poet,
Thomson of the Seasons. Johnson always regards Thomson as a
true poet, but Boswell inclines to qualify his praise : ' His Seasons
is indeed full of elegant and pious sentiments, but a rank soil,
James Boswell as Essayist m
nay a dunghill will produce beautiful flowers.' In the essay
(number LXX of the series] :
' There may be fine thoughts on the surface of a coarse mind, as beauti-
ful flowers are found growing upon rocks, upon bogs, nay upon dunghills.'
Both in the Biography and the essay (number XVI of the series]
the same quotation from Lyttleton is applied to Thomson, namely,
that ' he loathed much to write.'
In the essay Pleasure in Excess (number IV of the series ;
Jan. 1778), we read :
{ Even an excess of pleasure is an evil. For, strange as it may seem, it
is most certainly true, that in our present state of being an extreme degree
of pleasure turns into pain ; as the author of Virtue^ an ethic epistle, has
very happily expressed it —
Till languor suffering on the rack of bliss
Confess that man was never made for this.'
In the Biography (anno 1777; vol. iii. p. 221, Napier's
edition) :
' The feeling of languor which succeeds the animation of gaiety is itself
a very severe pain ; and when the mind is then vacant, a thousand dis-
appointments and vexations rush in and excruciate. Will not many even
of my fairest readers allow this to be true ? '
And in a footnote to the passage he adds :
' But I recollect a couplet apposite to my subject in Virtue, an ethic
epistle, a beautiful and instructive poem by an anonymous writer, in 1758,
who, treating of pleasure in excess, says
Till languor, suffering on the rack of bliss
Confess that man was never made for this.*
Again, in the essay (number XIV of the series] discussing
reviews and reviewers, Boswell says : ' And we have seen from
the evidence brought by Dr. Shebbeare in a court of justice, that
the gain of reviewers is very liberal.' In the Biography (anno
1783) we read : ' I mentioned the very liberal payment which
had been received for reviewing ; and as evidence of that, it had
been proved in a trial, that Dr. Shebbeare had received six
guineas a sheet.'
In the essay, Hypochondria and Madness (number V of the
series] Boswell carefully defines these ailments, and combats the
opinion that there is no difference between them, and says :
* Mr. Green in his poem The Spleen, of which I have heard Mr. Robert
Dodsley boast as a capital poem of the present age, preserved in his collec-
tion, has enumerated exceedingly well the effects of hypochondria,' etc. ;
ii2 J. T. T. Brown
and turning to the Biography we read :
' On Saturday September 2Oth after breakfast . . . Dr. Johnson and I
had a serious conversation by ourselves on melancholy and madness ; which
he was, I always thought erroneously, inclined to confound together ' (vol.
iii. 2Ol) ;
and in another place this :
1 1 related a dispute between Goldsmith and Mr. Robert Dodsley one
day when they and I were dining at Tom Davies in 1762. Goldsmith
asserted that there was no poetry produced in this age. Dodsley appealed
to his own collection and maintained that though you could not find a
palace like Dryden's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, you had villages composed
of very pretty houses : and he mentioned particularly The Spleen.1
Boswell manifestly was consulting his journal when he wrote
the essay.
Another illustration, one of the best, is the essay Fear and
Pity (number II of the series}, where we read :
1 In our present state, fear is not only unavoidable by rational beings,
who know that many evils may probably, and some must certainly befal
them, but as far as we can judge, it seems to be one of the preventives and
correctives of human suffering. Accordingly that great judge of human
nature, Aristotle, when justly extolling the usefulness of tragedy, as medicine
for the mind, tells us in a metaphorical definition taken from physic, Si
eXeou KOI (poftov Trepaivovva rrjv rwv TOIOVTCOV ira&rnjia.T<av KaBapa-iv^ — it
by the means of pity and fear purges the passions1
In the Biography (April I2th, 1776) :
4 1 introduced Aristotle's doctrine, in his Art of Poetry, ' KoBaptri^ T<av
Tradtj/j-aTcavy the purging of the passions' as the purpose of tragedy. 'But
how are the passions to be purged by terror and pity ? ' said I, with an
assumed air of ignorance, to incite him to talk, for which it was often neces-
sary to employ some address.'
Boswell sorrowfully adds that his record on this occasion does
great injustice to Johnson's commentary on the classic subject,
which was so forcible and brilliant that one of the auditors
whispered at the conclusion, ' O that his words were written
in a book.' The essay may be Boswell's attempt to recapture
some part of the discourse ; at any rate, it clearly shows his
journal in use.
In the essay, Of Speaking and Keeping Silent (number XXIII
of the series), we read :
4 Sometimes our benevolence will be best exercised in talking and some-
times in listening just as we find the humour of those with whom we are
James Boswell as Essayist 1 1 3
at the time. I write to the ordinary run of mankind. For, there does to
be sure now and then appear an extraordinary man, by whom all should be
willing to be instructed and entertained. Of such a man London can
boast in the present age. I shall not name him ; because if the description
does not present him to the minds of any of my readers as much as his
name could do, they are unfortunate enough either not to know him, or
not to be sensible of what the most of all his contemporaries acknowledge
... It is not however against too much speaking only that I would guard
my readers . . . Such of my readers as wish to see the subject treated in a
serious manner, with a view to consequences, more awful than it is my
purpose at present to introduce, may consult that valuable treatise entitled
The Government of the Tongue.
In the Biography (April 2, 1779), the same subject is discussed
and is concluded, ' I by way of a check quoted some good admoni-
tion from The Government of the Tongue, that very pious book
(vol. iii. 372).
There is a curious dialogue in the Biography, concerning the
Chinese, which seems to be isolated, and to have little connection
with anything else ; Johnson had been calling East Indians
barbarians :
' Boswell. You will except the Chinese, Sir. Johnson. No, Sir. Boswell.
Have they not arts ? Johnson. They have pottery. Boswell. What do you
say to the written characters of their language ? Johnson. They have not
an alphabet. They have not been able to form what all other nations
have formed. Boswell. There is more learning in their language than in
any other, from the immense number of their characters. Johnson. It is
only more difficult from its rudeness ; as there is more labour in hewing
down a tree with a stone than with an axe.'
In the essay, Things and Words (number LIH of the series),
we read :
4 1 am at present engaged in looking into a book of which I heard acci-
dentally. It is entitled Bayeri Museum Sinicum, being a complete account
of the Chinese language, printed at Peterburg in 1730, and it appears to
me to display an aggregate of knowledge, ingenuity and art, that is
enough to make us contemplate such powers of mind with inexpressible
veneration.'
It may of course be only coincidence.
So much for relation : many more examples might easily be
given. The following few passages illustrate Boswell 's sound
literary judgment.
In the Biography you will remember how he distinguishes
between Johnson when * he talked for victory ' and * Johnson
when he had no desire but to inform and illustrate ' : this is
ii4 J» T. T. Brown
what he says in the essay Of Disputing for Instruction (number
XXXIV of the series] :
' The desire of overcoming is not only an obstruction to the propagation
of truth but contributes to disseminate error. A Goliah in argument will
take the wrong side merely to display his prowess, and though he may not
warp his own understanding, which is sometimes the case, he will probably
confound that of weaker men ' ;
and in the essay which immediately follows, Of Imitating the
Faults of Great Men (number XXXV of the series] —
'In literary compositions, the faults of celebrated writers are adopted,
because they appear the most prominent objects to vulgar and undiscerning
men, who would fain participate of fame like theirs by imitating their
manner. . . . How many men have made themselves ridiculous by dull
imitation of the sudden sallies of fancy and unconnected breaks of senti-
ment in Sterne ? How many pigmy geniuses have, like the frog in the
fable, that burst itself by vainly thinking it could swell to the size of an ox,
become contemptible by aping the great style of the modern colossus of
literature.'
The ' Goliah in argument ' and ' the modern Colossus of
literature,' are of course Johnson, who is frequently so styled
in the Biography.
The essay concludes thus :
'The delusive propensity to imitate the vices- of eminent men, makes it a
question of some difficulty in biography whether their faults should be
recorded. ... I am ... of opinion that a biographer should tell even the
imperfections and faults of those whose lives he writes, provided that he
takes a conscientious care not to blend them with the general lustre of
excellence, but to distinguish them and separate them, and impress upon
his readers a just sense of the evil, so that they may regret its being found
in such men, and be anxiously disposed to avoid what hurts even the most
exalted characters, but would utterly sink men of ordinary merit.'
In another essay, Of an Author's Revising of his Works
(number XXVII of the series] :
'Correction is a capital difficulty which authors have always held out to
the attention of their readers. The ancients talk a great deal of the meta-
phorical file in literary performances ; and Horace recommends keeping a
work for no less than nine years before one should venture to publish it.
But is there not in this a great deal of quackery, or at least unnecessary
anxiety ? . . .
' Many a book has been so altered and corrected in subsequent editions,
though carrying the same title that one might compare it to the ship of the
Argonauts which was so often repaired that not one bit of the original
wood remained. Indeed, I have always considered it not quite fair to the
James Boswell as Essayist 115
purchasers of the first edition of a book, to alter, correct and amend, and
improve it so much in after editions, that the first is rendered by compari-
son of very little value. Yet it would be hard to restrain an author from
making his own work as perfect as he can. The purchasers of a first
edition have had what they considered to be value for their money. They
may keep that value ; and are not under any obligation to purchase a
better edition. The case is not quite clear. I shall therefore leave it to the
consideration of my readers and only relate a witty remark of a learned
friend, who when I had complained that a book which I had bought
when it came first out, was altogether changed in a new edition ; then, said
he, if you buy this edition you will get another book.'
'Some men have a vacillancy of mind which makes them quite indecisive
in their composition, so that they shall alter and correct as long as they can ;
and at last be fixed only because the types cannot be kept longer standing.
When this is only as to the language it is ridiculous enough. But when
their indecision respects the very substance of their work, they are surely
very unfit to be authors. An eminent printer told me that a book of some
authority upon law was printed at his press, and that when the proof
sheets were returned by the author, there was frequently an almost total
alteration of many parts. This, said he, was an effectual preventive to me
from ever going to law ; for, I considered, if the authority itself was so
uncertain, what must be the uncertainty of the interpretations of that
authority.
In the next essay he speaks of authors distrusting their own
opinion of their works and having recourse to the judgment of
friends. This is his own opinion, and we know that he followed
it always :
'That a fondness for our own compositions may prevent us in many
instances from perceiving their faults, I allow ; and therefore the opinion of
impartial friends may be of use. But unless I am convinced that my
friends are in the right I will not comply with their opinion.'
The essay which brings the series to a conclusion is written
in Boswell's best style, almost as well finished as the prefaces
in the Biography :
1 1 am absolutely certain,' he says, ' that in these papers my principles are
most sincerely expressed. I can truly say in the words of Pope, —
I love to pour out all myself as plain,
As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne.
Perhaps indeed, I have poured out myself with more freedom than prudence
will approve, and I am aware of being too much of an egotist. . . .
* There is a pleasure when one is indolent, to think that a task, to the
performance of which one has been again and again subjected, and had
some difficulty to make it out, is no longer to be required. But this
pleasure, or rather comfort, does not last. For we soon feel a degree of
uneasy languor, not merely in being without a stated exercise, but in being
1 1 6 James Boswell as Essayist
void of the usual consciousness of its regular returns, by which the mind
has been agreeably braced.
1 A conclusion however, should be put to a periodical paper, before its
numbers have increased so much as to make it heavy and disgusting were
it even of excellent composition, and this consideration is more necessary
when it is entirely the work of one person, which in my first number I
declared the Hypochondriack should be. I have resolved to end with
number seventieth, from perhaps a whimsical regard to a number by which
several interesting particulars are marked, the most interesting of which is
the solemn reflection that ' the days of our years are three score years and
ten.' To choose one number rather than another, where all numbers are
rationally indifferent, there must be a motive, however slight. Such is my
motive for fixing on Number Seventieth. It may be said, I need not have
told it.'
Boswell's motive for concluding with the seventieth essay was
good enough for periodical readers, but there were other and
better reasons not needing then to be publicly divulged. His
succession to the family estates in August 1782, on the death
of his father, Lord Auchinleck, had brought new cares and new
employments which were pressing heavily on him. That was
one reason : another and weightier one was the sudden and
serious illness of Dr. Johnson, whose paralytic seizure in June
exactly synchronises with the dispatch to the printer of the
seventieth essay, which appeared in the July number of the
London Magazine.
The essays were tentative and preparatory for the greater task
that now seemed at hand. They had served their purpose and
been useful more than once in furnishing topics for conversation
during the most fruitful period of his intimacy with Johnson, the
years 1777-1783. What perhaps is most remarkable to a
twentieth century reader is, that nearly every subject discussed
in them is brought under review in the Biography during those
six years ; giving the impression that the Biographer had pro-
posed the themes and incited Johnson to talk on them.
Be that as it may, it is scarcely doubtful, that the essays are
intimately related to the Biography and were used by Boswell
in the preparation of the final text. That is the only proposition I
have advanced and I hope that even the few examples I have
given, will have made it fairly clear.
J. T. T. BROWN.
Reviews of Books
OLD DORNOCH : ITS TRADITIONS AND LEGENDS. By H. M. Mackay,
Town Clerk of that City and Burgh, with Foreword by Millicent,
Duchess of Sutherland. Pp. viii, 151. Crown 4to. Dingwall :
North Star Office. 1920.
MR. MACKAY has printed his four 'popular lectures' delivered at Dornoch in
1912-14. The volume is divided into four chapters, viz. I. Medieval
Dornoch, II. The Reformation Period, III. The Reformation to the
Revolution, and IV. The Revolution to the Disruption. In these the writer
presents the interesting history, necessarily with gaps, of the old city. The
book is written evidently from a full mind by one who is deeply attached to the
burgh and parish in which he lives, and has a thorough knowledge of its
ecclesiastical and civil remains, and of the successive personalities connected
with it in ancient and modern times from the days of the Church of St. Bar
until those of the Free Kirk. From Sir Robert Gordon's Genealogie of the
Earles he quotes freely, but he must have given his extracts regarding early
times with his tongue in his cheek. For after all Sir Robert, when he deals
with events before the times in which he lived, is a sad romancer. We doubt
the derivations given by Mr. Mackay of Cnoc-an-Lout as connected with
Jarl Liot, and of Crock Skardie as referring to Jarl Sigurd ; and there is
little, if any, evidence for St. Bar's having been Bishop of Caithness, though
this Irish saint of the fifth or sixth century may have had the Church,
which preceded St. Gilbert's, named after him. Again, the stories of St.
Gilbert (which come from the Aberdeen Breviary) are almost certainly mere
monkish inventions ; and the existence of the five earliest bishops in the
list quoted at page 52 is very doubtful, and probably Andrew was first
bishop. Earl Harold (in spite of Sir Robert), did not kill Bishop John.
It is, too, unlikely that Freskyn (Fretheskin or Fresechyn) de Moravia
came from Friesland, and the family were established at Strabrock in
Linlithgowshire before Freskyn, the first of them to come North, and him-
self a good lowland Pict or Scot, came to Duffus in Moray.
Of St. Gilbert, the founder of the cathedral at Dornoch, and his charter
a full and excellent account is given, with a most interesting identification
of the sites of all the ecclesiastical buildings and residences — so good that
we long for a map. The old etymology of Dorn-eich ('horse shoe') for
the city's name is given as traditional, but its real origin is still to seek, in
spite of the city's ' horse-shoe ' corporate seal. We have little doubt that
the Earl's Cross, which survives, was a mere boundary stone ; while the
King's Cross at Embo, which has disappeared, possibly marked the site of a
1 1 8 Mackay : Old Dornoch
fight of uncertain date with the Norsemen, who are said to have landed at
Little Ferry, where, doubtless, long before, they had had (as Mr. George
Sutherland Taylor suggested) a town or settlement on the ness of the Vik
called Vik-naes, and by Gaels corrupted into Uignes and later Unes.
Turning to the later chapters, the accounts given of the land-grabbing
proprietors at the Reformation, and later of the Tulchan bishops and
clerics, Catholic and Episcopalian alike, of the vandalism of the Mackays in
destroying and of the Sutherlands in 'restoring' St. Gilbert's Cathedral,
and of the clan fights for the burgh form an excellent and illuminating
commentary on Sir Robert Gordon's bald statement of such events ; and
the heroism of the fighting Murrays, loyal survivors of the old stock of the
De Moravia family, stands prominently out in Mr. Mackay 's book.
The writer dwells (perhaps in one instance with undue breadth of
anecdote) upon eccentric persons of modern days, of whom the burgh
always yielded an abundant crop, and he tells us of the witches of Dornoch
and of the burning of the last of them at the stake.
Mr. Mackay's book was not originally meant for publication, but to
humour and please a local audience. In it he has given us a set of sketches,
extending over more than seven centuries, drawn in good perspective,
and painted in true and effective local colour, of an interesting old
Scottish burgh and its inhabitants, and we venture to express the hope that
he will now proceed to write its history with an appendix of records from
the charter room at Dunrobin and the municipal archives, illustrated by
photographs, a map of the parish and large scale plans of the burgh showing
the sites of its ancient buildings. JAMES GRAY.
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE BRITISH SEAS, written in the year 1633 by Sir
John Borroughs, Keeper of the Records in the Tower of London.
Edited with introductory Essay and Notes by Thomas Callander Wade,
M.B.E., M.A., LL.B. Pp. viii, 115. 8vo. Edinburgh: Green
& Son, Ltd. 1920. 75. 6d. net.
BY a curious coincidence this book appears to have been dealt with by two
Scottish writers independently at the same time. A brief and accurate
account of it is to be found in Mr. Heatley's book (Diplomacy and the Study
of International Relations, pp. 131 to 141), and it is now edited with an
excellent introductory essay and notes by Mr. Wade.
The work is a small one written in Latin in 1633 at the request of
Charles I., when the famous controversy with the Dutch as to the freedom
of the sea was on the point of leading to open rupture between the two
countries. Desiring to be sure of his ground before challenging the
encroachments of the Dutch in the North Sea fishing grounds, which had
hitherto been regarded as exclusively English, the King commanded Sir J.
Borroughs to prepare a Memorandum setting forth * the true state of the
question of the Dominion of the British Seas,' and the present work was
the fruit of researches in the unpublished records of the Tower of London.
It was completed in 1633, two years before the appearance of Selden's
Mare C/ausum, which used much of its historical material, but it was not
published till 1651, eight years after the author's death. In the literature
Wade : Sovereignty of the British Seas 1 1 9
of the famous controversy it occupies an important place, for though it
made no contribution to the legal aspects of the dispute, it contains much
(though probably unsifted) historical evidence of the assertion of the English
claim to sovereignty in the seas. Nor did the author forget the political
object for which his Memorandum was required, and he added by way of
appendix a quite important note on the * inestimable riches and commodities
of the British Seas,' which, for its mere information as to the British sea
fisheries of his day, and their importance as a source of political power, is
still of value.
Mr. Wade is to be congratulated in making so excellent a contribution to
the breadless study of international law. His own equipment is well shown
in his introductory essay, and his work is a credit to the scholarship to be
found among practising lawyers in Scotland. A. H. CHARTERIS.
THE LIVINGSTONS OF CALLENDAR AND THEIR PRINCIPAL CADETS : The
History of an Old Stirlingshire Family. By Edwin Brockholst
Livingston, author of The Livingstons of Livingston Manor. New
edition, entirely revised and greatly enlarged. Pp. xix, 511. 4to.
With 20 Portraits, 8 coloured coats of arms and other illustrations.
Edinburgh : Printed at the University Press by T. & A. Constable for
the Author. 1920.
THIS sumptuous volume is, so far as bulk is concerned, the most weighty
contribution to Scottish Family History that has appeared for many years.
But, as we shall see, it has much more to recommend it, and is a very
thorough and exhaustive piece of genealogical work. If the Livingstons
did not play quite so conspicuous a part in Scottish History as did the
Douglases or the Hamiltons they were well to the front throughout, and a
family which can boast of having had some seven peerages conferred on its
members, not to speak of five baronetcies, cannot have had a negligeable
influence on public affairs. It is a far cry to their beginning ; whether
or not they can rightfully claim descent from that Saxon Leving who
inhabited his * toun ' in Linlithgowshire and gave the church of the same
to the newly founded Abbey of Holyrood in 1128, they can at all events
boast of a pedigree which is both ancient and honourable. It is from Sir
William Livingston, who had acquired the widely separated lands of
Gorgyn or Gorgie near Edinburgh and Drumry in Dumbartonshire, that
the Livingstons of Callendar derive their descent, his younger son, another
Sir William, being founder of that house. It is matter of history how
the grandson of the latter Sir Alexander played a conspicuous part in the
reign of James II., how he was nominated Guardian of the infant King
and had the Queen Mother arrested, and how a similar fate met the chiefs
of the house of Douglas, who were ultimately through the machinations of
Livingston and Chancellor Crichton, executed for high treason.
But there were many ups and downs in these troublous times and the
Livingstons fell from their high estate in 1450, some of them being
executed, while almost all of them had their estates confiscated. But only
a few years afterwards Sir Alexander's son Sir James got his property
restored to him and was created Lord Livingston of Callendar. He also
1 20 Livingston : The Livingstons of Callendar
for some time occupied the position of Guardian of the King and held
besides the offices of Great Chamberlain and Master of the Household.
The fourth Lord Livingston was a waster, and if he was present at the
battle of Flodden he escaped with his life from that fatal field, though
several of his kinsmen were among the slain. Alexander, fifth Lord
Livingston, was one of the eight Guardians of Queen Mary appointed by
Parliament in 1543, and five years afterwards accompanied his young
mistress to France, where he died the following year. William, the sixth
lord, the brother of one of the Queen's Maries, was one of the leaders of the
Reformation, which, however, did not prevent his being a faithful friend
to his Queen, and he was by her side when she hastened from the dis-
astrous battle of Langside. Both he and his wife shared the earlier years
of Mary's captivity in England, and both never ceased their exertions in
her cause. In 1573 he returned from England, made his submission to the
government of the boy King, and for the next twenty years occupied
himself unobtrusively in the business of the country. The next lord made
himself useful to James VI., was along with his wife (who was a Catholic
and got into great trouble with the Presbyterian ministers on that account)
appointed Guardians of the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, and was,
on the occasion of the baptism of Prince Charles, created Earl of Linlithgow.
His son, the second Earl, continued the tradition of the family in being a
favourite at Court, and was appointed Vice-Admiral of Scotland, not
perhaps a very arduous office in these days, though he must have been very
proud of it as a portrait of him is still in existence in which his honest
though not very distinguished-looking countenance beams with satisfaction
as he holds in his hands an obsolete type of some naval instrument,
possibly a sextant. He was also Keeper of the Palace of Linlithgow, an
office which his father had held.
The third Earl was a soldier all his life, beginning his service under Sir
John Hepburn in the thirty years' war. He became the first colonel of
the Foot Guards, an office which he exchanged in 1684 for the somewhat
incongruous one of Lord Justice-General. His son the next Earl was also
a soldier, but had a shorter career than most of his family. With the fifth
Earl the fortunes of the Livingstons were eclipsed. A Jacobite Peer, he
was attainted and his estates forfeited in 1716. On his death in 1723 he
left an only child, Anne, who married William Boyd, Earl of Kilmarnock,
whose execution on Tower Hill in 1746 has been the subject of many a
graphic narrative.
It is impossible within due limits to indicate the many distinguished
persons who have made the name of Livingston honoured through both
Continents. Among the more notable peerage honours which fell to them
may be noticed that of the Viscounty of Kilsyth, which was created in the
person of Sir James Livingston of Bencloich in 1661. But this title too
was forfeited in 1715.
The holders of the Newburgh Peerage were in a way more fortunate,
Royalists though they were. Sir John Livingston, the first Baronet of
Kinnaird, accompanied James VI. to England, and so ingratiated himself
with His Majesty and his successor that he was created a baronet in 1627,
Livingston : The Livingstons of Callendar 1 2 1
while his son Sir James was raised to the Peerage under the title of
Viscount Newburgh and Lord Kinnaird at the early age of twenty-five.
After the Restoration he was further promoted as Earl of Newburgh and
got the more substantial benefit of a lease of the customs of the Border for
a term of twenty-one years. His son, involved in Jacobite plots, narrowly
escaped by finding bail for £5000. He died in 1694, and the Earldom
descended to his only child, a baby girl. She married, in time, as her
second husband, Charles Radcliffe, the next brother of the unfortunate Earl
of Derwentwater. He did not take warning by his brother's fate, but
was * out ' in the '45, and the executioner's axe clumsily severed his head
from his body in the following year. The Earldom of Newburgh now
went through various vicissitudes. It was not forfeited by the attainder of
Charles Radcliffe and was inherited by his eldest son (there being no sons
of the Countess's first marriage). His son in turn succeeded, but on his
death without issue the title devolved upon a person with eight Christian
names, but who was known as Prince Giustiniani, who was the great grand-
son of Charlotte Livingston by her first marriage with Thomas Clifford. He
took no steps, however, to establish his right to the title, and it was
erroneously assumed that as he was an alien the right would pass to the
descendants of the younger daughter (a daughter by the second marriage)
of Countess Charlotte, Lady Mary Radcliffe, who married Francis Eyre,
by whose descendants it was accordingly assumed and borne till 1858,
when a lady with ten Christian names, the daughter of the above-mentioned
Prince, was naturalised and proved her right to the Earldom. She married
the Marquis Bandini, and the title is at present vested in the person of her
grandson Carlo.
There were many Livingston families who did not attain to the dignity
of the Peerage, and the history of all of them is carefully treated in detail
by the author. The Livingstons of Newbigging had no doubt a fleeting
glimpse of Peerage honours in the person of Sir Thomas, who was created
Viscount of Teviot in 1697, but ^e ^ied without issue and the Peerage
came to an end, and a Baronetcy, which he had got in 1627, also expired
when his brother died in 1718.
The Westquarter family were an important branch, but the succession
was very erratic, and the estates came ultimately into the hands of the
Bedlormie branch ; the next owners were the Fenton-Livingstons, and
with them closed the ownership of Westquarter, which was sold in 1909.
The family of Parkhall, who still retain that estate under the name of
Livingstone Learmonth, call for no special mention. The Dunipace
Livingstons were to some extent more interesting, having had a Baronetcy
conferred on Sir David in 1625 with remainder to heirs male whatsoever.
The first Baronet dissipated his estates, left his family in poverty, and the
title has never been taken up since, though some one must be entitled to it.
It is impossible to mention even by name the other cadet branches
to: which chapters are devoted. There are full accounts of Virginian
Livingstons, who came from Aberdeen, besides Highland and Irish branches
and two French families of the name whose progenitors were in the Scottish
Archer Guard. The Scottish descent of the Livingstons of the Manor
1 22 Livingston : The Livingstons of Callendar
of Livingston in the Province of New York is also given, the American
generations having been already treated of by the author in another large
book.
It will be seen from the above that this is a very exhaustive family
history, and puts on record probably everything that is known about the
name so far as our knowledge goes at present. It has been compiled with
much loving care, and if it is not altogether for the general reader it will
at least prove a mine of information for persons engaged in genealogical
research, or who may wish to trace the historical sequence of any of the
families mentioned. Besides being excellently compiled, the book has
everal special features to recommend it. At the end of each chapter there
are relative notes and references giving chapter and verse for every state-
ment in the text. The last two chapters of the book are specially interest-
ing : the one treating of the castles and mansions occupied or owned by
Livingstons in the olden time ; the other deals with the heraldry of the
family, which in some cases shows strange variations, particularly in the
crests. The cinquefoils or gillyflowers are, however, a constant feature,
though the origin of these together with the royal treasure borne by some
branches of the family is a matter of conjecture, as is the reason why no
less than a dozen different mottoes should be borne by various offshoots.
There are eight coats of arms illustrated in colour from the pencil of Mr.
Graham Johnston of the Lyon Office, which are exceptionally fine speci-
mens of heraldic art, and there are no less than twenty portraits repro-
duced. These vary in merit, but there is a charming portrait of the last
Viscount Kilsyth, the famous Jacobite soldier, representing him as a boy
sitting on a grassy bank, with a spaniel of somewhat disproportionate size
sitting at his feet, along with some trophies of the chase. It is a pity that
the artists' names are not, when known, given.
JAMES BALFOUR PAUL.
A HISTORY OF SCOTLAND FROM THE ROMAN EVACUATION TO THE
DISRUPTION, 1843. % Charles Sanford Terry, Litt.D., Burnett-
Fletcher Professor of History in the University of Aberdeen. Pp. Ivi,
653. 8vo. With Portrait, Eight Maps and Thirty-two Genealogical
Tables. Cambridge : University Press. 1920. 2os. net.
PROFESSOR TERRY has re-written the history of Scotland on a scale which
will appeal to those who have not leisure or inclination to read works in
more than one volume and those who have out-grown the use of school-
books. In other words, he has endeavoured to supply the need of both
general readers and students ; and it may not be easy to determine which of
the two classes is the more to be congratulated on the result of his labours.
To achieve the degree of compression required for a work of this kind
without prejudice to clearness must have been a most difficult task ; and
Professor Terry has been very successful, except perhaps where, in the
laudable desire to present his facts in their proper sequence, he approaches
them from one point of view and then returns to them from another.
There is much to be said for this method, which avoids the discursiveness
of chronological narration ; but it may occasionally perplex the reader,, as
Terry: Scotland from the Roman Evacuation 123
in the case of Sol way Moss, p. 168, and also pp. 370-381, where Mon-
trose's defeat at Philiphaugh and the surrender of Charles to the Scots are
twice mentioned in different connexions. The constitutional history of
Scotland — such as it is — might have received more attention from one who
has written a treatise on the Scottish Parliament. Social and intellectual
life is almost excluded from the survey till in the eighteenth century it
becomes the main theme ; and then the economic development is rather
crowded out by the literary and philosophical revival. Battles, except of
course in their antecedents and results, are barely mentioned j but, as a
set-off to this scant allowance of fighting, we have the insertion of much
that is quaint and enlivening from original sources, and notably the two
vivid characterisations of James VI.
The pre-Reformation period is disposed of in 182 pages, and thenceforth
full advantage is taken of the larger canvas. The compression in this part
of the book is indeed rather intensified than relaxed, but it is less apparent
owing to the necessity of working up into the narrative a greater wealth of
detail ; and the author threads his way through the mazes of political and
religious dissension with an impartiality which is even more remarkable
than his skill. These qualities are satisfactorily tested in the reigns of
Mary, James VI. and Charles I. ; but perhaps the most judicious and
interesting chapters are the three which carry the narrative from 1660 to
1688. As the biographer of Claverhouse, Professor Terry must have been
already familiar with the central part of this period ; but he achieves his
greatest success towards its close.
The chapter on the Union comprises a graphic and very accurate sketch
of the Darien scheme ; and it is safe to say that there is not one of the
many influences promoting or obstructing the Union which does not
receive adequate recognition in this masterly and vivacious survey. Here
and elsewhere the narrative is happily embroidered from the contemporary
records — for example, in regard to the Marquess of Athol, ' whom caution
had removed to Bath, ostensibly to ' pump his head.' ' The style of the
book accords admirably with its rugged strength. It is terse, if not brusque,
epigrammatic and frequently picturesque. These qualities are conspicuous
in the brief opening chapter, ' The Roman Episode ' ; but the flavour
which provokes an appetite for so much solid fare is, as it should be, too
pervasive to be tasted in quotation.
There is reason to believe that Scottish history as taught to junior
students is by no means a virile diet ; and it is much to be desired that
Professor Terry should prepare a school edition of his book.
W. L. MATHIESON.
GEORGE, THIRD EARL OF CUMBERLAND (1558-1605) : His LIFE AND
His VOYAGES. A Study from Original Documents. By Dr. G. C.
Williamson. Pp. xix, 336. 8vo. Cambridge : at The University
Press. 1920. 255. net.
THE first Lord de Clifford was killed at Bannockburn. The eleventh was
made Earl of Cumberland by Henry VIII. and became grandfather of the
hero of this work. The author has discovered, and has been permitted to
124 Williamson : George, 3rd Earl of Cumberland
use, documents hitherto unpublished, including original letters and 'the
three stately manuscript volumes of the Clifford papers.' He tells us that
Earl George, an orphan at eleven, was sent when thirteen years of age to
Cambridge, the first Earl of Cumberland to have a university education.
He remained at college over three years, and his expenses of residence
amounted to nearly £200, which the author thinks ' in those days was a
very considerable sum.' It covered his buttery charges, tutors' fees,
breakfasts, candles, wood, coal at 15$. (£2 of our money) a load, fees for
two doctors and cost of medicines to the « Apotigary,' dancing lessons, a
* gittern lute,' a bowe and arrows, his clothes (some of silk and taffeta), his
laundry bill, his pocket money and the cost of keeping two horses and a
groom . . . We almost wonder how he did it, and read without surprise
that he had his breeches mended for is. 6d., his hose footed for 4d., and
that he paid id. for a comb.
At nineteen he was married to Lord Bedford's youngest daughter, who
was not yet seventeen. He does not seem to have spent much of his life in
her companionship. She lived at his castle of Skipton in Yorkshire. He
became a diligent attendant at Court, and was one of those famous adven-
turers who, after Drake, carried on the process of * singeing the King of
Spain's beard,' to their country's profit, not forgetting their own.
The chief part of the book is given to his twelve expeditions to this end.
The last, in which Puerto Rico was taken and held till fever made it
untenable, was the most important. Lord Cumberland did not accompany
them all, though he equipped or helped to equip them. The fifth has an
interest of its own. Detained for three months in Plymouth by contrary
winds, it sailed in 1592 and he remained on shore. It consisted of five
ships. They joined forces off the Azores with part of another English
expedition and together captured the Madre de Dios, probably the richest
prize ever up to that time brought to England.
They took 800 negroes out of her, a rich booty that seems hardly to
have been missed. For she was laden with spices, pepper, drugs, amber-
gris, carpets, calicoes, ivory, porcelain, hides, carved ebony furniture, jewels
of great value, including diamonds and pearls, besides other wealth. Much
was transferred to the Earl of Cumberland's ships and not accounted for at
the final settlement. Much of the cargo and most of the jewels indeed
never came to light. Sir John Burrows with a prize crew took the ship
home in the Queen's name. But the crew put into various ports in the
Azores, and at each sold for their own benefit part of the treasure. The
huge vessel, after enduring terrible storms, was brought into Dartmouth
late at night. Then began a scene described as like Bartholomew Fair.
The sailors carried ashore and sold what they liked. The rabble plundered
at their will, and there was no one with authority or power to stop them.
News came to the Privy Council, and a Commission, Robert Cecil at its
head, was sent down post haste to take possession. But private enterprise
was quicker. Every jeweller in London had agents to meet the carrack.
There were two thousand buyers. The Queen had few troops and no
ready way of transporting them. When the' Commission arrived much of
the most precious booty had disappeared. But there was still a vast
Williamson: George, 3rd Earl of Cumberland 125
treasure to examine. Things of great value were found hidden in the
private chest of the commander, Sir John Burroughs, who, however, does
not seem to have suffered any penalty even in public estimation.
The various adventurers were awarded their shares. The Queen got a
tenth, and in addition, ' ex gratia? the pepper. The pepper rilled the holds
of six ships and was brought to London, where she sold it for £80,000 to
a syndicate, whom she protected by prohibiting all importation of pepper
till they, in turn, should have sold it. Lord Cumberland was awarded
£36,000, with the view of encouraging him to further adventures. But
no Commissioner ventured to search his returning ships, though, as Raleigh
bitterly says, they overhauled his to the keelson.
Lord Cumberland was always a courtier and lived in the favour of his
virgin mistress, who endured no rivals and exacted unstinted devotion of
life, property, deeds and even thoughts to her service. It is recognised that
this was, though enforced in Tudor fashion, the service of England. Her
task was almost overwhelming, her resources in men and money what we
should call miserably inadequate. Yet she made them serve. The author
harps too much on her rapacity.
Dr. Williamson is a practised biographer. He has all the needful zeal,
industry and conscientious devotion. Yet he lacks the incommunicable art
of the story-teller. He heaps up information, and we gather with interest
even the scraps — the sort of food supplied to the navy, the mention of
fraudulent contractors and victuallers, of allies supplying the enemy with
food and munitions, of the maimed in war losing their home jobs and
coming on the parish, of plans known as promptly to the enemy as if Spain
had been the Sinn Fainn. We are grateful for the light thrown on the
hero of the book, his associates and the times in which they lived.
The book has a good index and is adorned with many fine illustrations, in-
cluding seven portraits of Lord Cumberland. One of these might have been
spared in return for a good map of his voyages. ANDREW MARSHALL.
OLD ENGLISH BALLADS, 1553-1625. Chiefly from Manuscripts. Edited
by Hyder E. Rollins. Pp. xxxii, 423. Cambridge : at the University
Press. 1920. 1 8s. 6d. net.
INSCRIBED to Professor Firth this capital addition to tne ballad treasury of
Great Britain is the editorial spoil of Dr. Rollins, Assistant Professor of
English in New York University. It presents in handsome guise no fewer
than seventy-six poems reproduced either from manuscript or from broad-
sides which are often as rare as manuscript. Great care has been taken to
search out the contemporary side-lights of ballad history coming from
calendars of state papers and the like as well as from the numberless publi-
cations which form ' fasciculi ' of ballad texts. The introduction neatly
and competently classifies the pieces, differentiates their motives and places
them in their general relationship in the whole series. The seventy-six
items consist of ballads on Queen Mary and on Queen Elizabeth, Catholic
ballads, protestant ballads, miscellaneous ballads, appropriately ending with
(odd juxtaposition) ' The Parliament of Devils,' followed by ' A singular
salve for a sick soul.' The categories are thus comprehensive enough.
126 Rollins : Old English Ballads
The selection largely reflects the controversies of the Reformation, and
therefore the introductory discussion deals with the persecution of protes-
tants under Mary and the protestant reprisals under Elizabeth and James.
These burning questions indeed considerably 'fill the bill ' of the book and
dominate the'study prefixed. Both sides are represented, and the editor
has some justification for his opinion that the balance of merit and spirit
inclines to the Catholic production. Direct use of historical incidents and
allusions to the religious movement and changes of the time occur through-
out. Cases of individual martyrdoms and persecutions are the subjects of
specially doleful yet earnest ditties, notable among them those on Robert
Glover, protestant, burnt 1555, and John Careless, also protestant, who
died in prison 1 564. Later pieces include a denunciation of the * hereticke '
John Lewes, burnt 1583, the outburst of metrical indignation against
Edmund Campion, Jesuit, executed for the faith 1582, and the laments
over the four priests who suffered for the like cause 1601, as did John
Thewlis, 1616, on whom two remarkable ballads appear, the one theo-
logical in purport, but the other a crude but graphic narrative of a pitiful
doom. What a percentage of doctrine can be dissolved into a ballad, how
even the crucifixion can serve for a theme not to mention the cross itself,
is shown by this noteworthy collection. The pessimist flourished too :
one may not be surprised to find him a Catholic, fallen on evil days,
denouncing the reformed tenets :
They deem them selves predestinantes,
yet reprobates indeede
Free-will they will not have ; good workes
with them are voyde of neede ; —
Which poyntes of doctrine doe destroy
eich commonwealth and land :
Religion ould in order due
makes Kingdoms longe to stand.
More curious are thirteen stanzas soon after 1603 * by a lover of music
and a hater of the Puritans,' whose iniquities included hostility to song and
harmony : They doe abhorre as devilles doe all
the pleasant noyse of musiques sounde
Although Kinge David and st. Paule
did much commend that art profound :
Of sence thereof they have noe smell
Noe more than hath the devilles in hell.
The miscellaneous pieces are chiefly religious in cast, but among them is
a capital * Song of the Duke of Buckingham,' being an earlier and better
version than that in the Percy Folio of a political tragedy in 1483. It is a
surprise to find so little trace of Scotland and the Scots in this considerable
bagful of storied song, but one satire circa 1620 follows a familiar strain of
jibe at the unpopular immigrant. It tells how formerly the old English
beggars swarmed at fair and market, feast and farm :
But nowe in these dayes from Scotland we see
for one English begger, of Scottes there come three :
Warrack : Domestic Life in Scotland 127
In fayers and markets they scorne to abide .
the courte is theire Coverte to mainteine theire pride
by begging, by begging.
This incomplete summary will show what a mass of excellent song-stuff
— some of it for literature, all of it for history — is still coming and to come
from the commonplace books, the private copy-books, and even the house-
hold account books of unknown people who loved and preserved these
pious, controversial, mournful, joyous and satirical ditties and rimes on
current things which were indeed the ballad singer's joy.
It is not easy to divine the motive of the selection. Evidently the
editor found an attraction in his reiterated conclusion that the Protestant
barbarities against Catholics outdid those of Mary against the reformers,
and form a very dark blot on ' the spacious times of great Elizabeth ' and
on the reign of her successor. A critic is not called on to settle the
comparison, but he welcomes the opportunity of saying that Dr. Rollins
approves himself at all points a skilful and sympathetic editor, that he
enriches his text by his commentary, and that his substantial and deeply
-interesting book does honour even to its distinguished dedication.
GEO. NEILSON.
DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND, 1488-1688 : A Sketch of the Development
of Furniture and Household usage. (Rhind Lectures in Archaeology,
1919-20.) By John Warrack. Pp. xvi, 213. With Sixteen
Illustrations. Crown 8vo. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd. 1920.
75. 6d. net.
THOSE who attended Mr. Warrack's lectures in the spring of 1920, and a
large public besides who are interested in the romance of the past, will
welcome the appearance of this volume.
Mr. Warrack has delved deep in musty records and literary works, and
has produced from his finds a series of pictures of Scottish interiors charac-
teristic of the various political periods to which he refers them. He
commences with the feudal castle with its great hall sparsely furnished, and
while he details its picturesque appointments he corrects any tendency to
undue admiration by adverting to some of the inelegant social usages of the
time. Let it suffice to mention one. It was bad manners to blow the
nose at meals without turning aside the head !
His picture of the pre-reformation parson of Stobo in his manse at the
head of the Drygate of Glasgow, shows a condition of luxurious living
among the clergy which, if general, explains much of the spoliation of
church property which followed a few years subsequent to this worthy
cleric's death. From his income of 2OOO merks a year from the benefice
of Stobo one would like to know how much he allowed the rural vicar who
had the cure of souls in Stobo. His bed is carved and gilded, and hung
with damask curtains ; his watering pot is of silver, he has chains and
ornaments of silver and gold, and such a wardrobe as would enable him to
xut a fine figure indeed as he walked the streets of the Glasgow of his day.
To those of us who accept the terms of objects of daily use without
troubling as to their true intent Mr. Warrack has much information to give.
128 Tait : The Chartulary or Register of
He tells of the evolution of the cupboard from a table to display cups on, to
a press in which to conceal them ; and of many other developments and
changes which have brought about the fashion of our homes as we know
them, and of our manners with which, perchance, we grace them.
Mr. Warrack has used his evidence with restraint, and not generalised
too freely when facts did not warrant it, as is too frequently done in treating
of times bygone. If occasionally he seems a little discursive it must be
remembered that these sketches were written to be delivered in the form of
lectures which of necessity must be less condensed in their matter. It is
to be hoped that some day Mr. Warrack will carry his enquiries farther and
give us a picture of life in Scotland in the eighteenth century with an
account of the development of the household furnishings, a period for
which he would find ample material to work on.
ALEX. O. CURLE.
THE CHARTULARY OR REGISTER OF THE ABBEY OF ST. WERBURGH,
CHESTER. Edited with Introduction and Notes by James Tait, M.A.,
President of the Society. Part I. Pp. 1, 256. Small 410. Man-
chester: Printed for the Chetham Society. 1920.
THE Chetham Society has conferred another great boon on northern
antiquaries by the publication of the first part of the chartulary or register
of the famous abbey of St. Werburgh, Chester, under the immediate
supervision of Professor Tait, president of the Society. It is not easy to
write with reserve of the importance of some of the deeds comprised in this
collection. Not only has the abbey of Chester its roots firmly fixed in the
pre-Conquest period, but its refoundation on a Benedictine basis by the
Norman earls of Chester invests the charters, given to the community in
the early twelfth century, with an interest and importance not altogether
confined to the locality. Though most of these early deeds were known
through the reports of Dugdale, Ormerod and others, we have at last been
supplied with the best available texts and a critical discussion of their
integrity. It is fitting that such a work, in view of the position that the
abbey held among northern ecclesiastical institutions, should have been
entrusted to Professor Tait.
It is satisfactory that the charter of King Edgar to the religious
community of St. Werburgh in 958, so long regarded as a forgery or at
least treated with suspicion, should now be vindicated as authentic,
'though absolute proof is not within our reach.' This conclusion has
been formed after consultation with Mr. W. H. Stevenson and Dr. Henry
Bradley, and from such a court of experts it will be hazardous to appeal.
The document supplies the earliest trustworthy evidence of the existence
of a collegiate church in Chester, entitled in the name of St. Werburgh,
and thus goes a long way to settle the claims of rival founders.
The testimonium of Archbishop Anselm, said to be * the earliest extant
document of its kind issued by an English archbishop,' by which he
confirms the refoundation of the old college of canons into a Benedictine
institution by the first Norman earl of Chester at the close of the eleventh
century, throws a welcome light on the procedure of the period. It
the Abbey of St. Werburgh, Chester 129
reflects, we believe, the general mode of reconstruction in Scotland, as well
as in England, when native institutions were superseded by those of the
continental type of ecclesiastical organization. That which happened to
the old canons of St. Werburgh at the time of the reconstitution of the
abbey was the same as the treatment that King David I. at a later period
meted out to the Culdees of St. Andrews. As the Culdees were permitted
to retain possession of their old status for life or to embrace the Augustinian
Rule and become canons of the newly-founded priory, in like fashion the
prebends of the old community of St. Werburgh could only revert to the
new monks after the decease of the prebendaries, not as Dugdale inferred,
that the old canons were obliged to become monks of the new foundation.
The document, here printed at large, is worth the close attention of
students of ecclesiastical origins in Scotland.
The deeds in this portion of the collection, 408 in number, though
relating largely to Cheshire, have an external interest by reason of the
feudal status of the early benefactors of the Norman institution, not only
of the famous family of the founder, Hugh of Avranches, and his successors
in the earldom, the family of Meschin in the twelfth century, but of the
principal potentates on the Welsh Border. The contents of the volume
touch general history in various particulars, not the least of which is the
extraordinarily interesting carta communis Cestrisirie, which Professor Tait
denominates * the Magna Carta of Cheshire,' whereby Earl Ranulf III.
conceded certain remarkable liberties to his Cheshire barons on their
petition about the date of Runnymede. The immunity from service
beyond the eastern boundary of Cheshire without their consent or at the
earl's expense reminds us of the claims of the Cumberland tenants on the
Scottish Border in the old fief of Ranulf I. when lord of that district. One
would like to know more of the incidence of foreign service and its relation
to castleguard at home both for the tenants within the county and outside
it. There is a curious similarity in the military features of Border fiefs,
whether with regard to Wales, Scotland or Normandy, which have been,
so far as we know, never fully worked out.
There is a slip on p. 71 where the late Sir Archibald Lawrie is mis-
named, and it is doubtful whether the editor is justified in describing any
member of the earl's family as le Meschin. It may be allowable in the
case of other families, like those of Brus and Percy, to distinguish the
younger from the elder of the same name, but in the usage of the earls of
Chester and collateral branches, Meschin was the family name without
reference to age or status. In one of the deeds of this register Ranulf, son
of William, the founder of Calder Abbey in Cumberland, describes himself
as Ranulf de Ruelent (Rhuddlan), son of William Meschin, which is
curious. He was probably born at Rhuddlan. But the volume is so full of
historical materials, bristling with points of interest on almost every page,
that we need only refer the reader to a diligent perusal of it.
JAMES WILSON.
130 Pollen : The English Catholics in
THE ENGLISH CATHOLICS IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH, 1558-
1580. A STUDY OF THEIR POLITICS, CIVIL LIFE, AND GOVERNMENT.
By John Hungerford Pollen, S.J. With 8 Illustrations. 8vo. Pp.
viii, 387. Longmans, Green & Co. 1920. 2is. net.
FATHER POLLEN has now published in consecutive form some results of
the long studies which have already borne fruit in various articles in The
Month^and in the introductions to volumes xxxvii and xliii of the Scottish
History Society. His work is based upon original authorities, and besides
the sources commonly used he has been at pains to consult the manuscripts
preserved in the archives of Paris, Simancas, the Vatican, the English
College at Rome, Westminster, and Stonyhurst. The book, therefore, is
well 'documented,' and — to quote his own eulogy on Nicholas Sander
(p. 306) — we shall always find him a witness on the Catholic side who is
worthy of attention. An impartial historian, however, he is not, although
he makes a genuine effort to be fair. To Queen Elizabeth, luckless victim
— as he supposes — of hard times and evil counsellors, he is surprisingly
lenient, and to Burleigh, though he exaggerates that statesman's antipathy
to Spain, he shows himself not ungenerous (p. 14) ; but from a historical
standpoint the book is vitiated by the unfortunate consequences of the
writer's firm conviction that the Church of Rome is eternally in the right.
Such a conviction, indeed, is not necessarily incompatible with the writing
of sound history, but in this case it has prevented the author from fully
understanding the dilemma which confronted both the English government
and its Catholic subjects, and it has also caused him to judge somewhat
partially the deeds and motives of the great protagonists.
The reason for Father Pollen's failure to grasp the real point at issue is
obvious. Confident in his faith he sees, in the universal spiritual dominion
of the Popes, nothing incompatible with the temporal dominion of princes.
Nowhere does he lay stress upon what was the great drawback of the
Roman religion in the eyes of a race which gloried in the new-found
* nationality,' the fact that the rule of the Pope was a ' foreign ' domination.
For our author, Burleigh is not an English statesman, but a * Protestant
courtier ' (p. 329), and by constantly underrating the strength of the appeal
of nationality, he fails to make clear the main difficulty of the English
Catholics. With the Elizabethan government he is no more successful.
Constantly distinguishing between the 'spiritual' and the 'temporal'
ambitions of Catholicism, he is unable to see why the English ministers
pursued a policy of persecution. A passage on page 303 reveals very
clearly his attitude of mind.
' It was not the conquest, humiliation, or the dismembering of his country
of which he [Sander] was thinking, but of the re-establishment of religion,
law and order in place of regal tyranny and heretical licence with revealed
doctrines.'
This may be true. But the English government could not direct its
policy by what Dr. Sander was thinking, what concerned it was the
* conquest and humiliation ' which would inevitably ensue if once his thoughts
were clothed with action.
the Reign of Queen Elizabeth 131
More serious than Father Pollen's failure to appraise the questions at
issue between the Tudor government and its Catholic subject, is the partial
way in which he distributes his censure and his praise. Firm in his belief
that Rome was always right, he (unconsciously perhaps) applies one
standard to the defenders of the Faith and another to her opponents.
The government's use of spies is everywhere condemned, but it is quite
innocuous (or even meritorious) for Catholics to ' elude ' tests by taking
oaths against their convictions (p. 253), to bribe governmental officials
(p. 342), and to engage in conspiracies (p. 183). That Queen Elizabeth's
ministers persecuted can be denied by no sane historian, but our author
makes no mention of a fact which his book abundantly proves, namely, that
— except in great emergency — the officials preferred to wink at a great
deal, nor does he ever think of comparing the lot of an English recusant
with the fate of a heretic in Spain. To Bonner and his burning confreres
is applied a standard of real politik (p. 7). 'They had not the instinct to
see where to stop ' ; but there is no justification for the proceedings of the
English government, even though (p. 250), if judged by the same standard,
those proceedings were most successful. Drake was a pirate who in 1581
came home ' laden with the spoils of a country with which England was at
peace' (p. 15), but if the Spanish Council (though it may not have planned
Elizabeth's assassination) prepared in 1571 to utilise the coup if it were
made, its action is 'not edifying,' but not 'very astonishing' (p. 180).
' The theory that paternal tyranny is the ideal form of government ' is
dismissed as 'radically unsound' on p. 188, but when (p. 66) the Catholics
took the view that the object of a council was not to judge the Pope, but to
hear his judgments, their attitude is considered perfectly orthodox. The
original intention of Ridolfi may have been not to assassinate Elizabeth, but
to convert her (by a coup d'etat^ of course) ; but though Father Pollen
undoubtedly proves that the account of Pius V.'s share in the transaction,
as given in the Ada Sanctorum^ rests on a mistranslation, he will hardly
convince most readers that, in the eyes of the compilers of the Acta^
Elizabeth's taking-off was not an enterprise which might well engage the
consideration of the Saint (p. 125, note 2). Pius cogitabat illam malorum
omnium sentinam^ seu (ut appellabat ipse] flagitiorum servam, de media tollere
can hardly bear any other meaning. After all, Pius had certainly excom-
municated the Queen, he did encourage Ridolfi, and Ridolfi's schemes,
however they began, certainly ended in an ' enterprise of the person ' of a
most suspicious kind (p. 176). It would be easy to add further instances
of the writer's partial judgment, but one more must suffice. We read
(p. 183) that in August, 1572, the Earl of Northumberland was executed.
' On the same day the French King and his mother Catherine de Medici
perpetrated a still graver crime in the massacre of St. Bartholomew.'
Incidentally, were not the Guises involved ?
Having considered the light in which Father Pollen views the problem,
and the standards by which he judges action, we can now approach his
main thesis. Beginning with a description of the complete collapse of
Catholicism in 1559, he goes on to show that the ' political ' attempts of the
Catholic princes were unreal, ill-coordinated, and ill-timed, and that their
132 Pollen: The English Catholics in
effect was not to improve, but to damage, the position of the English
Catholics, which reached its nadir in 1568 (p. in) or in 1573 (p. 250).
But all the while there was springing up, unseen, a fresh spiritual
impulse which expressed itself (pp. 106-1 1) in a new controversial literature,
1564-1567, and in the founding of the Seminaries (chap, vii.), and which
worked up triumphantly to the great mission of 1580 (chap ix.).
The first chapter, though written from a Catholic point of view, is clear,
sound and full of information; the account of the Catholic reaction and
the counter-Reformation abounds in interest, and will be, for the average
English reader, the most valuable portion of the book. It is to be regretted
that Father Pollen (than whom none could do it better) has not told us
more of the home life of the honest, valiant 'recusants' who would remain
English, but could not find it in their hearts to conform. Unfortunately,
however, captivated by his interest in the 'political' side of the counter-
Reformation, he devotes much space to questions which have already been
fully discussed by Knox in his Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen,
and by Kretzschmar in Die Invasionsprojekte. Much of the book, indeed,
is devoted to the doings of the Catholic fugitives and their schemes for a
reconquest of England.
Father Pollen, it is true, sets the matter in a somewhat new light. He
gives evidence to prove that the Catholic League, so dreaded by Elizabeth's
ministers, was a myth, and that the excommunication — a purely legal
measure resting on no religious dogma — would not necessarily involve the
destruction of Elizabeth. He goes on to prove that the English govern-
ment, which he represents as an influential minority (a kind of ' Soviet,'
perhaps) deliberately made capital by exaggerating the dangers of Catholic
invasion, and (p. 241) was 'mean enough' to employ the alleged danger
'as an incentive to further persecution.'
This is hardly fair to the Elizabethan government The Bull had
certainly been issued to support a rebellion (p. 294), and, even after it
received the mild interpretation of 1580 it still laid upon Elizabeth the
' unchanging anathema.' Neither the Pope nor any other Catholic doubted
the Papal power to depose monarchs, and if Father Pollen condemns the
Bull at all it is only because it was not too well timed (p. 158).
However one might explain the Bull away, it was a reality. The course
of history and the evidence of the archives prove that the Catholic League
was not. But the Age, still tinged with the ' Universalism ' of the Middle
Ages, was prone to believe in Leagues, and the Elizabethan government
(which lacked both our experience and our information) may be pardoned
for its mistake — a mistake based not only upon the reports of untrustworthy
spies, but on the evidence of the Bishop of Ross himself (p. 339). After
all, one Pope (p. 164) had certainly encouraged the Ridolfi plot ; another
had sent to Don John not only 50,000 crowns to aid his enterprise, but
also (possibly) the investiture of England or Ireland (p. 216), had en-
couraged Stukely and had equipped Fitzgerald. Father Pollen, who thinks
that the Pope's conduct in these affairs was marked by 'very great
imprudence' certainly succeeds in proving that the connection between
such political adventures and the despatch of the Catholic mission is more
the Reign of Queen Elizabeth 1 3 3
slender than has been imagined (p. 232 and p. 332). But as the life of
Persons shows, it was impossible to draw a rigid line between spiritual and
political aggression.
If, then, the Elizabethan government showed its fear of a great Papal
League, such fear was not unnatural ; but Father Pollen is right in his
contention that the main strength of the Papacy was not the calculating
support of the Princes, but the courage and devotion of the missionaries.
With the story of Edmund Campion the work closes on a high note of
courage and optimism.
If Father Pollen, as he seems to imply, will tell in another volume of
the success which these missionaries enjoyed, his book will be heartily
welcomed.
J. DUNCAN MACKIE.
DIPLOMACY AND THE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS. By D. P.
Heatley, Lecturer in History, University of Edinburgh. Pp. xvi,
292. 8vo. Oxford : Clarendon Press. 1919. 75. 6d. net.
BY an oversight attributable to the reviewer and not to the editor (for which
the former tenders his apologies to the author), notice of this book has been
too long delayed, for it is a work of varied interest and erudition, deserving
a cordial welcome from the intelligent general reader and the student of
modern history. Although it is neither a collection of essays nor a text
book in the technical sense, its remarkable apparatus of citation and
references make it approximate to a book of the latter kind. If the first
paper, from which its title is derived, is on the whole disappointing, the
balance is redressed by three others of outstanding merit, (a) on the juristic
literature of the development of international understandings as law,
which fills a gap too often noticeable in modern English text books on
International Law. In these one looks in vain for a critical appreciation of
the classical writers, Vattel, Wheaton, Martens, Phillimore and others, who
are constantly referred to as if they were of equal value. The present
author's contribution towards filling this gap deserves nothing but praise ;
(£) a well informed and well written account of the seventeenth century
controversy on the sovereignty of the seas, which is given as an illustration
of controversial literature for the benefit of historical students. Here again
the author's wide reading and scholarly understanding command respect ;
and (c) an excellent account of the earlier projects for perpetual peace which
have not been without their effect in establishing the League of Nations on
a foundation of governmental support which none of its predecessors had
the good fortune to enjoy. Historical student, as he is, the author is not
inclined to be sanguine of the success of the present scheme even with its
advantage above referred to.
Attention should be drawn to two important appendices, the first con-
taining a rich and varied selection of extracts illustrative of the function of
the ambassador, the qualities of the diplomatist, and the conduct of
negotiations. And the second, taken from more or less contemporary
sources, on more modern aspects of the same subject. Of especial value in
view of the popular demand for open diplomacy are the extracts from the
i
134 Heatley : Study of International Relations
Report of the Select Committee on the Diplomatic Service of 1861 which
the author gives at pp. 250-259. His own conclusions, as contained in his
first paper, are substantially based on this report. He has some good
remarks on the true nature of control over the determination of foreign
policy in a country such as ours, viz : — in Parliament's command of the
purse and the responsibility of ministers to the House, and he recognises, as
did the resolution of the Imperial War Conference of i6th April 1917, the
right of self-governing Dominions and India to an adequate voice in the
conduct of foreign policy and full information on foreign relations. The
conclusion of peace has not deprived this question of its topical importance
which dominate all others in the internal relations of the Empire.
A. H. CHARTERIS.
HISTORY OF THE BERWICKSHIRE NATURALISTS' CLUB. Vol. XXIV.
Parti. 1919.
HAVING as its frontispiece a portrait of the late Commander F. M.
Norman, R.N. (preceded by a Roll of Honour, 1914-18), this issue opens
with the anniversary address of the president, Professor R. C. Bosanquet,
on 'The Beginnings of Botany — some Notes on the Greek and Roman
Herbalists.' The early botanists of Greece and Rome are discussed with
wealth of reference and illustration, and the mixing of magic with
medicine down the ages is emphasised. The coming of Christianity did
little or nothing to shake the belief in exorcisms, prayers and set formulae
carefully observed.
Reports of meetings and excursions follow, including one to Traprain
Law, where Mr. A. O. Curie gave an instructive address. The next
paper is on ' Border Bookplates ' with illustrations, by Mr. T. G.
Leadbetter, and there are several shorter articles and interesting notes.
In the last paper Dr. George Neilson writes on 'Birkenside and the
Stewardship of Scotland,' giving text and translation with notes of Charter
by Malcolm IV. in favour of the Steward of the lands of Birkenside and
Legerwood. The article is furnished with six pages of excellent facsimiles
and a sketch map. New light is thrown upon the relations of the Skene
and Balfour copies of the Stewardship Charter, placing the Skene copy in
its rightful place of accuracy, and showing up Sir James Balfour's un-
warrantable tampering with his original. Having misread in Sir John
Skene's copy of the lost Charter the contracted word postquam, rendering
it priusquam, Balfour did not hesitate to add a non-existent date, and to
make other clumsy and misleading attempts to render his copy consistent
with itself. Hence have naturally followed confusion and doubt as to the
authenticity of the Charter preserved by Skene. Balfour's garbled copy
has, as is well known, been printed in sundry important historical volumes,
e.g. the Register of Paisley. Aided by Dr. Maitland Thomson, Dr.
Neilson has now cleared up what was dark, and by putting before the
reader the text in facsimile of Skene's transcript and Balfour's ' doctored '
copy thereof, he has placed the authenticity of the Stewardship Foundation
Charter on firmer footing than ever before.
JOHN EDWARDS.
Gloag : Carmina Legis 135
CARMINA LEGIS OR VERSES ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE LAW OF SCOTLAND.
By W. M. Gloag. Pp. viii, 82. Glasgow : MacLehose, Jackson
& Co. 1920. 55. net.
AN ' attempt to illustrate the principles of the law of Scotland in metrical
form ' is in itself a whimsical experiment requiring a certain measure of
wit to carry it off. To report a judgment and give the reasoning in rime,
as for example in Bruce v. Smith, 1890, 17 Rettie 1000, calls for juridical
equally with metrical precision. The Sheriff and the Court of Session
alike rejected the custom claimed by an overlord in Shetland for his third,
as his share of the prize when whales were driven ashore. In what degree
apt and perspicuous a versified rendering may prove itself even at this
incongruous task, may best be gathered from a quotation which is not
without its felicities.
Judged by these rules the Shetland custom fails
To give a landlord any right in whales
In catching which he neither lent a hand
Nor gave the captors passage o'er his land.
There is no proof that udal law extends
Land rights beyond the point where dry land ends,
Nor that the law of Shetland would impeach
The right of fishermen to use the beach.
Then for the landlord no case can be made
Save that such claims have hitherto been paid,
But paid by men who had good cause to fear
Resistance to the claim would cost them dear.
A customary law no court will frame
From forced compliance with a lawless claim.
The poet as law reporter has to ' bridle in his struggling muse with
pain ' in order to satisfy the law ; and on the other hand must have his
troubles in getting the question of title to sue or damnum fatale or maybe
the Gaming Act of eighteen ninety-two into happy combination with the
stanza. A critic's formula might well be to ask whether the legal or the
poetic element predominates, and to answer that Professor Gloag's legal
exercises in verse invite the reader rather to share the mild diversion they
afford, than to disintegrate the elements of wit and metre from their
coalition with the law. Gfia NEILSON>
MYTHICAL BARDS AND THE LIFE OF WILLIAM WALLACE. By William
Henry Schofield, Professor of Comparative Literature in Harvard
University. Pp. xiv, 381. Medium 8vo. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press. London : Humphrey Milford, Oxford University
Press. 1920. I2s. 6d. net.
THE fifth volume of the Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature is de-
voted to a reconsideration of the problems connected with Blind Harry's
Wallace. These have attracted an amount of attention which is somewhat
remarkable when one reflects on the meagre quality of the Wallace regarded
136 Schofield : Mythical Bards and the
as literature. The poem, however, did so much to express and nourish
Scottish patriotism, it was for so long, in one form or another, familiar in
Scotland, by being woven into the substance of widely-read histories, it be-
came to such an extent the record of
How Wallace fought for Scotland, left the name
Of Wallace to be found, like a wild flower,
All over his dear country ; left the deeds
Of Wallace, like a family of ghosts,
To people the steep rocks and river banks,
Her natural sanctuaries, with a local soul
Of independence and stern liberty —
that historical students were compelled to examine it and to test its value.
The task was undertaken at first with obvious reluctance by Blind Harry's
countrymen, but as the historic sense quickened and the poet's vogue lessened,
their treatment became more thorough till Dr. George Neilson is found
asserting that 'as history the poem is the veriest nightmare.' Professor
Schofield gives a sketch of the progress of opinion on the trustworthiness
of Blind Harry as a chronicler, but it is no more than a sketch.
Once the critical instinct was roused other questions began to be asked,
and current accounts of the author of the poem, what he has to say of
himself and of the sources of his narrative all came under suspicion. The
existence of John Blair, Wallace's chaplain, according to Blind Harry, and
his Latin book was doubted, the picture of the author as a blind wandering
minstrel was found less convincing, and that he was, as he himself declares,
an unlearned man, seemed less certain. The arguments against his having
been blind from birth and being ca burel man,' based on such natural
description and display of literary and astronomical lore as may be found in
the poem are not conclusive. In a case of which probabilities and sup-
positions form so large a part it is well to avoid even the appearance of
dogmatism, but these arguments seem to underrate the sense-experience of
the blind and the amount of stock material and cliches used in the Wallace.
Here is a passage full of delight in nature : ' What a joy it is to feel the soft,
springy earth under my feet once more, to follow grassy roads that lead to
ferny brooks where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes,
or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that tumble and roll and
climb in riotous gladness.'
The passage is from Miss Helen Keller, who, when about eighteen
months old, became deaf, dumb and blind, and the Wallace contains no
lines with such a genuine passion for nature. Miss Keller has several
passages of this quality. Here is one more : * A child's mind is like a
shallow brook which ripples and dances merrily over the stony course of its
education, and reflects here a flower, there a bush, yonder a fleecy cloud.'
In Blind Harry there is nothing so near in spirit to nature as to compel the
assumption that he was not congenitally blind or indeed blind at any time.
If it be argued, as it has been, that a blind man could not have had access
to the material employed, especially if he were unlearned, very delightful
play can be made, as has been done by Dr. J. T. T. Brown and others,
with the author's knowledge of Chaucer and his scholarly allusiveness.
Life of William Wallace 137
But if the author were a genuine minstrel he would have had access to the
minstrel's stock in trade, and come into possession of a miscellaneous body
of knowledge.
Professor Schofield has a theory of his own which renders unnecessary all
such discussion about a real Blind Harry. He assumes that the author of
the Wallace was called Blind Harry, but he was not a wandering minstrel
and was never blind. Whatever his station may have been, he was in
close sympathy with the nobility, was possibly a herald-messenger, certainly
< a vigorous propagandist, a ferocious realpolitiker, without principle when it
was a question of Scotland's place in the sun, without reluctance to lie
in manipulating history to his own end.' This unknown person took as
his pseudonym * Blind Harry,' since ' his prime object was to fan a pestilent
quarrel, and he could have chosen no person more suitable to be the mouth-
piece of his violent hate than a bard of Fenian blood, one of the race of
Ossian, and akin to Billie Blin, alias Odin, calewise, caleworker, sower of
enmities.' Many pages are devoted to the treatment of Blind Harry as a
mythological personage, son of Gow mac Morn, and great-grandson of
Finn mac Coul. The investigation penetrates into many nooks of curious
lore and includes even a hint that Wandering Willie of Redgauntlet may
be Billie Blin ! Scott did not require to go to mythology for the original
of a strolling blind fiddler with a rowth o' auld tales ; Blin Bob was a well-
known street hawker in Aberdeen, up to some thirty years ago, and was
famous for his caustic speech, but no one ever l evened' him to Billie Blin.
There is no proof whatever that Professor Schofield has hit on the true
solution of the authorship of the Wallace by postulating two characters,
one mythical and the other fictitious. The book contains matter, such as
the chapters on c Blind Harry and Blind Homer ' and ' Conceptions of
Poesy,' which is only slightly, if at all, relevant to its leading proposition,
and there are occasional lapses in expression. ^ ™ \yILLIAMS
PUBLICATIONS OF THE CLAN LINDSAY SOCIETY. Vol. II. No. 8. Pp.
xxiv., 88. Demy 8vo. Edinburgh. Edited for the Board of
Management by John Lindsay, M.A., M.D. 1920.
THE last item in this, the concluding part of the second volume of these
publications, may very properly be mentioned first : — it is a ' Roll of
Honour of Clan Lindsay.' While the Roll is not held out as * complete
in extent or exact in every detail,' it is clearly the result of much research
in such records as are as yet available. It contains 626 names of Lindsays
or sons of Lindsay mothers, and 144 of them are recorded to have made
the supreme sacrifice*
The largest contribution to the part consists of 44 pages, and is a
historical account of the family of Lindsay of Dowhill. In its method it
is a model for the treatment of such a family in such a periodical. It loses
nothing by its moderation in its conclusion on the evidence that exists of
the derivation of the line of Dowhill from the main line of the Lords of
Crawford. The appearance of John, son and heir apparent of Adam
Lindsay of Dowhill, among the heirs in the famous Lindsay entail of 1 6th
138 Publications of the Clan Lindsay Society
October 1641, by which the Earl diverted his succession from his son 'the
Wicked Master,' is sufficient by itself to presume that the family of Dow-
hill was reckoned among the kin of the Entailer ; and the non-appearance
of Adam himself and his other sons only proves that « the Wicked Master '
was not the only Lindsay who was omitted from the Earl's list. It may
be remarked in passing that, on pages 278-9, in the print of the Extract of
the Matriculation of John Lindsay of Dowhill's Arms, given out by Lyon
on 1 7th September 1673, the word effects should presumably read efferis ;
the word Barriemundie should read barrle undie ,• and the word Corse should
read Tone.
Some useful pages of notes of wills of * miscellaneous Lindsays of the
sixteenth century whose pedigrees are not precisely ascertained,' are
contributed by Mr. W. A. Lindsay, K.C., Norroy King of Arms. In the
course of some prefatory observations he says, referring presumably only to
the law in the sixteenth century : — * The executor of an intestate estate is
the Procurator-Fiscal, but it was the invariable practice that the Com-
missary, appointed the wife or children — if any — as executors in place of
the Procurator-Fiscal.' If the second clause of the sentence contains an
accurate statement of the course of action of the court, it seems rather to
shake the statement in the first clause, for there is a general admission that
cursus curiae est lex cur'tae. I confess that I have not met evidence that the
commissary's procurator-fiscal ever had a right to the office of executor save
in the case of an individual executry to which he had been appointed and
confirmed by the commissary. Still, in the annals of the consistorial
courts, which earned the satire of Henryson in his Fable of the Dog and the
Sheep, and of Sir David Lindsay's Complaint and Testament of the Papingo,
one should be surprised at nothing.
A Scots Church statute of the thirteenth century, whether a statute for
the whole of Scotland or only for some single diocese is not certain,
enacts : — * As to the goods of one dying intestate, let the prelate of the
Church dispose of them as in God's sight.' (Patrick's Statutes of the
Scottish Church, p. 50.) That expressed the position of the medieval
church regarding the matter. The ecclesiastics had successfully arrogated
to themselves a most extensive jurisdiction in temporal affairs, of which the
matters of both testate and intestate succession were a lucrative part. But
the king's courts had opinions on some of these things too ; and in the
fourteenth century, if we take the Regiatn Majestatem as a witness, they
held, regarding the administration of an intestate's estate, that it belonged
to his relatives (ii. 31). This principle, however, was clearly not admitted
by the opposite party ; and early in the fifteenth century — in 1420 — the
Bishops, Abbots and clergy of a Scots Provincial and General Council
thought it well to re-affirm the position of the Church with unusual
solemnity. They came to a unanimous declaration on oath that ' from so
far back that there is no memory to the contrary, the bishops and those
holding the jurisdiction of an ordinary had been wont to ... appoint
executors to those who die intestate' (Patrick, p. 81). The declaration
extended to a good deal more ; but it is to be noted that regarding the
persons whom they appointed it said nothing.
Publications of the Clan Lindsay Society 139
It is unnecessary to recall that Henryson's and Lindsay's satires on the
ecclesiastical courts belong respectively to the second half of the fifteenth
century and the first half of the sixteenth. In 1540 a significant Act l was
passed by Parliament. It proceeds on a narrative that frequently in
the cases of people dying at too early an age to make a will, the ordinaries
(i.e. the bishops or those clothed with their authority) appoint stranger
executors, who ' withdraw the goods from the kin and relatives who should
have the same by law.' The Act ordains that in cases of such deaths the
nearest of kin shall have the succession without prejudice, of course, to the
quota due from the estate to the ordinary. The Act did not go beyond
the provisions of the Regiam Majestatem^ but it was ineffectual.
In 1549 the Church solemnly re-affirmed the right of the bishops and
their commissaries to appoint such executors as they chose.2 It was only
after the lapse of ten more years — in 1559, when the whole fabric of
church government was tottering to its fall — that the ecclesiastics gave way
on the point and formally admitted the right of the next-of-kin.3 How
far the bishops would have given effect to the statute we have no means of
knowing, for next year came the crash. But that the abuses had not been
removed before the Reformers came into power we know. One of the
first matters to which the Assembly of 1560 attended was c to desire the
Estates of Parliament to take order with the confirmation of testaments,
that pupils and orphans be not defrauded, and that laws be made thereupon
in their favours.' It was probably in consequence of this request of the
Assembly that the < Instructionis gevin to the Commissaries of Edinburgh,
Anno Domini [12 March] 1563 ' were issued,4 and the right of the next-of-
kin established firmly and — if I am right — finally. It is in the * Further
Instructions' of 26th March 1567 that, so far as I am aware, the Procurator-
Fiscal appears for the first time as a possible executor, dative : — ' vi. Item,
that everie inferior Commissar have ane Procurator-fiscal, quha sail be ane
honest discreit man, and persew all common actiounis, and sail be decernit
executour dative to all testamentis within the jurisdictiounis quhair he
servis, in cais the narrest of kin to the deid confirmis not the testament in
dew time, and ilk Procuratour-Fiscal sal find caution that the gudes he sail
happen to intromit with sail be furth cumand as effeiris . . . ' The next
and more detailed instructions belong to the next century — i6ioand 1666.
A short note by Mr. W. A. Lindsay on another subject is given the
place of honour. It records the recent discovery of a copy of a charter,
dated about 1147-50, by William de Lindesay of a parcel of his demesne
land in Molesworth, which was in the Earldom of Huntingdon. The
charter appears to be applicable to the settlement of a question which Mr.
Lindsay was obliged to leave open in his article on the Earls of Crawford
in the Scots Peerage ; and to show that William, the second named in the
succession of the Scottish house of Lindsay, was the son and not the brother
of Walter, who ranks as the first. j jj STEVENSON>
1 1540, Cap. 40. z Gen. Statutes, 1549, Patrick, p. 116.
3 Gen. Statutes, 1559, Patrick, p. 178. 4 Balfour's Practices, 654.
140 Robinson : A History of England
A HISTORY OF ENGLAND: THE TUDORS AND THE STUARTS, 1485-1688.
By Cyril E. Robinson. Pp. xii, 260. With 8 Maps. Crown 8vo.
London : Methuen & Co., Ltd. 1920.
THIS book carries out its aims of stirring interest, giving information and
imprinting facts upon the reader's memory. It is a fair account of a diffi-
cult period. The writer gives every necessary fact, and sometimes, as in
his account of Elizabethan literature, really awakes his reader's mind by
hinting at unfolded treasures. He is especially good on the Armada and
Charles II. The only thing we may point out is that sometimes he is so
anxious to be fair to the Reformers that he is hardly fair to their opponents.
We think, however, he sees Cromwell's Irish policy in its true light when
he writes : * Ireland was all to pieces, and stern treatment seemed the only
possible course ; but Cromwell was more than stern. For once in his life
he was abominably cruel.'
BELGIUM : THE MAKING OF A NATION. By H. Van der Linden, trans-
lated by Sibil Jane. Pp. 358. With 5 Maps. Post 8vo. Oxford :
The Clarendon Press. 1920. ys. 6d.
IN this work we have an excellent account of the inhabitants and different
governments of the country which has now become the habitat of the
Belgian nation. The first part — the Roman Conquest, the Franks and
the invasion of the Germans — is easy enough to follow ; but the second
portion — when the growth of the Flemish cities, gaining riches through
wool and other wealth, vied with the power of the feudal lords — is a trifle
confused. Again, the rise of the House of Burgundy would have been
more easily elucidated had there been a tabular pedigree of the Dukes,
showing their descents and how it led to the imperial, Spanish, and Austrian
rulers. We learn, however, with interest that Belgium during the Spanish
and Austrian rule retained more self-government and a more national
spirit .than is generally suspected, and this, after the Secession of 1598, was
aided by the Catholic renaissance. The various deviations between auto-
cracy and revolution until 1789 are well described, and also the various
successes and failures of the French from 1792-1814. Then came the
strange forced marriage between Belgium and Holland — an unnatural union
— which ended in 1830 by the foundation of the kingdom of Belgium.
This, though seemingly peaceful and not too glorious in its colonial rule,
suddenly showed that it could become glorious as a European State when it
defied Germany. Germany breaking a solemn treaty invaded Belgian terri-
tory— in the great world war ; and Belgium then manifested that it was
indeed a true nation willing to defend its own boundaries. A. F. S.
RELIGION IN SCOTLAND, ITS INFLUENCE ON NATIONAL LIFE AND CHAR-
ACTER. The Chalmers Lecture, 1916-1 920. By Henry F. Henderson,
M.A., D.D. Pp. ii, 236. Demy 8vo. Paisley: Alex. Gardner.
1920. 75. 6d.
THIS book arose from a Chalmers lecture, and is worth reading as an
account of the writer's view of the welding of national character and religion
Henderson : Religion in Scotland 141
in Scotland. Naturally perhaps he unites the two wherever he can, attri-
buting to religion the success of the Scot abroad and his excellent education
at home. He has to fall back uoon various sources — Sir David Lindsay,
John Knox, Patrick Walker, Sir Walter Scott on the one hand and Dr.
M'Crie on the other, that difficult source Robert Burns, and Robert Louis
Stevenson, who in his wildest moments retained ' something of the Shorter
Catechist.' He has done it well, for though he puts forward the founda-
tion of Savings Banks and other philanthropic works as works of religion,
and the excellent wide spirit of Carlyle of Inveresk, he does not forget the
awfulness of the witch burnings. Perhaps, too, he might have said more
of the tyranny of the Kirk Session, but, as the people acquiesced in it, it was
probably part of the natural spirit of the time.
THE EARLY ENGLISH COTTON INDUSTRY, with some Unpublished
Letters of Samuel Crompton. By George W. Daniels, with an Intro-
ductory Chapter by George Unwin. Pp. xxvii, 316. With 5 Illustra-
tions. Crown 8vo. Manchester : University Press and Longmans,
Green & Co. 1920.
THE introduction traces the cotton industry in Italy and the Low Countries,
and prepares us for the trade which sprang up with the merchant adven-
turers in London, which after many vicissitudes centralised in the Lanca-
shire cotton industry as far back as 1551. Mr. Daniels carries on the
history of cotton manufacture in that country from the early times to that
strange period * the coming of machinery.' Then came the opposition to
the latter, and later, the invention by Samuel Crompton (born in 1753) of
the 'Mule,' which in 1779 revolutionised the industry. Letters of the
inventor and accounts of his invention enrich this study.
THE EMPIRE'S WAR MEMORIAL AND A PROSPECT FOR A BRITISH IMPERIAL
UNIVERSITY OF COMMERCE. By Ernest H. Taylor and I. B. Black,
M.A., B.A. Large 8vo. Edinburgh : Macniven & Wallace. 1920.
THIS is an idea ' Made in Germany ' while the joint authors were
prisoners together at Rastatt in Baden. It began modestly as a ' Future
Career Society,' and the authors have now put forth their enlarged scheme
as a projected War Memorial for the Empire by the foundation of a
Business University. Their aim is as follows : To intellectualise our great
business communities and to produce a new business man and ambassador
who will enter the competitive markets of the world fortified with the
most up-to-date science of business and a new imperial and social point of
view. To provide the youth of the Empire with a new idealism based on
correct ideas of social and political responsibility. To create within our
various business committees a more enlightened public opinion that will act
and react on our politics, providing both a healthy criticism of policy and a
stimulus to fresh progress. In this brochure they carry out the develop-
ment of their idea in a very suggestive way.
142 Hassall : British History
BRITISH HISTORY CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED, 55 B.C.- 191 9 A.D. By
Arthur Hassall, M.A., Christ Church, Oxford. Pp. viii, 581. Post
8vo. London : Macmillan & Co. 1920. 2os. net.
EUROPEAN HISTORY CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED, 476-1920 A.D. New
Edition with additions. By Arthur Hassall, M.A. Pp. x, 439. Post
8vo. London: Macmillan & Co. 1920. I2s.net.
MR. HASSALL'S new volume on British History follows in method of
arrangement the plan adopted in his well-known Tables of European
History, of which a new edition has just been issued. The volumes are
brought down to 1919.
Both books are invaluable to teachers and students. Not only do they
bring together clearly an immense number of facts relating to historical
events and personages in their chronological order, but they show what
happened in other countries each year. Events which seem of great
importance to one State often acquire a different value when contemporary
events elsewhere can be compared with them ; and Mr. HassalPs volumes
make easy the study of these comparative values and relations. In both
books there are not only numerous genealogies and lists of sovereigns and
of ministries, but also appendices and notes giving the dates of wars and
invasions, and lists of great constitutional events.
We welcome these volumes very cordially.
EARLY RECORDS OF GILPIN COUNTY, COLORADO, 1859-1861. Edited
by Thomas Maitland Marshall, University of Colorado (being Vol. II.
of the University of Colorado Historical Collections, Mining Series,
Vol. I.). Pp. xvi, 313. Demy 8vo. Boulder. 1920.
THERE is much of interest in this volume. It shows that when miners in
great numbers began to penetrate the mountains they found it necessary to
establish local government. What their conditions were, in the way of
fighting a wintry climate with scanty supplies of food and of what are called
the necessities of life, may be gathered from the very interesting records
which were found in the vaults of the county clerks of Gilpin, Clear
Creek and Boulder counties. But these difficulties were but incidents in
the search for gold, which brought many thousand men to a country where
a few weeks before ' the grizzly bear had held undisputed sway.'
It is curious to find how soon these pioneers recognised that they must
organise a government and make laws. They did not wait for a constitu-
tion, but took matters into their own hands.
The volume now issued contains enactments made in Gilpin County
relating, among other subjects, to mining claims, working, local officials and
their duties and emoluments, trials, crimes and punishments. The variety
of subject is endless, but naturally the larger portion deals with the defini-
tion, recording and working of claims. The book throws a curious and
interesting light on a bypath of history.
Transactions of the Franco-Scottish Society 143
TRANSACTIONS OF THE FRANCO-SCOTTISH SOCIETY (Scottish Branch),
1914-18. Pp. iv, 148. 8vo. Office of the Society, 19 York Place,
Edinburgh, 1920.
No sterilisation of the historical mind resulted from the War, which in
matters Franco-Scottish was an active stimulant of research. The Annual
Reports for 1914, 1915, 1916, and 1917 give a cheerful account of the
Society's activities, which include an impressive new departure in the
purchase of two MS. Rolls on vellum containing the household accounts
of Mary Queen of Scots, 1550-1552. These have been laboriously
deciphered and transcribed by Dr. Maitland Thomson, whose variety of
service to our national history can hardly be sufficiently emphasised. The
information those accounts furnish is mainly culinary, showing the pro-
vision of bread, wines, fish, poultry and eggs, fruit and firewood for the
Royal Household of France. A very elaborate study of the history of
Inchkeith — a most proper theme for the Franco-Scot to undertake — has
been drawn up by Mr. A. Francis Steuart. * Inchkeith and the French
Occupation ' fills sixty pages of solid extract from all the authorities,
French, English and Scottish, from the fifteenth century down to the
repulse of Paul Jones in 1779 5 and it may be implicitly accepted as an
unmatched and trustworthy store of critical record reflecting circum-
stantially every phase of the island's eventful story. The great importance
of the island-fort due to its outlying position of aloofness and command
would seem to have been better appreciated by our French allies and our
English enemy than by our own authorities. This implication emerges
constantly from Mr. Steuart's sympathetic and spirited narrative. The
islands of the Forth have attracted French writers before, for instance
Mr. Louis Barbe, and this latest chapter greatly confirms the international
interest of the whole group to which Inchkeith belongs.
Mr. Baird Smith edits a receipt dated loth February, 1475^76], for the
wages of the Captain and Archers of the Scottish Guard. Several illus-
trations make these transactions more attractive, such as the pencil sketch
of Leone Strozzi, prior of Capua, and especially the touching frontispiece
of the French monument in honour of the i5th Scottish Division at
Buzancy (Aug. 1918), with its heart-stirring and superb motto : Id fleurisa
toujours le glorieux chardon d'Ecosse parmi les roses de France.
THE CAPTIVITY AND DEATH OF EDWARD OF CARNARVON. By T. F.
Tout. Cr. 8vo. Pp. 51.
REPRINTED from The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, this essay
is an admirable and fair-minded sifting of a very large body of evidence —
chronicle, public muniment, gossip, judicial proceedings, state papers, each
yielding its quota to the ultimate inferences — concerning the end of
Edward II. and the true inwardness of Berkeley Castle. The story of the
contemporary annalists has remarkably well undergone the ordeal of rigid
examination. It is a trying story, and Professor Tout's revision of
the entire case does not make it less harrowing. New points in the
144 Tout: Edward of Carnarvon
evidence are the curious challenge of William Shalford in 1331 for his
alleged complicity in — not exactly the murder, but in the steps leading up to
the murder in 1327. The inference finally reached is that all the circum-
stances, and especially the after-histories of the captive king's custodians,
point to Mortimer as the real criminal. One phrase in the essay (p. 21),
to the effect that a certain policy was < carried out with tenfold rigour than
before,' is rather a startling liberty with the English language in an other-
wise brilliantly written treatise.
AN OUTLINE ITINERARY OF KING HENRY THE FIRST. By William
Farrer. Royal 8vo. Pp. ii, 183. London : Oxford University
Press. 1920. 1 8s. net.
THIS is reprinted by permission of Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co. from
the English Historical Review. In notices of its original appearance there,
in two instalments, attention was directed (see S.H.R. xvii, 152) to the
importance and standard value of a study so nearly exhaustive of the
outlines of the career of Henry I. from noo until 1135. Parallel in
method to that of Eyton's well-known work on Henry II. this Itinerary
goes beyond its model in succinct yet widely diverse information, and will
be found indispensable for the annals of a reign in which the effects of the
Conquest revealed themselves in manifold changes and novelties in English
administration. Upwards of 740 documents are arranged, for the most
part absolutely but sometimes tentatively, according to their historical
order or connection. The absence of subject-heads in the index is perhaps
to be regretted, but the general student of the time will doubtless make his
own list of such generalisations and commonplaces for his own lines of
study.
Dr. Farrer's brief introduction sets forth the difficulties or the task
of finding dates and places and occasions for so many documents of which
so large a proportion are undated. He suggests as much to be desired
< a full chartulary giving the last and most complete text ' of all the
instruments now calendared. This may be a counsel of perfection ; if
not, its feasibility must be largely owing to the fine work the editor of the
Itinerary has done in first driving a clear road through the forest.
SAGA-BOOK OF THE VIKING SOCIETY. Vol. IX. Part I. Pp. 252. With
One Portrait. 8vo. London : Viking Society, 1920.
NOT every year, not once in a decade, is a society honoured by such
a contribution as that which Sir Henry H. Howorth, now president, has
made to its transactions, being the substance of two papers read by him
when vice-president two years ago. It is a long study in 252 pages of the
life of Harald Fairhair, founder by conquest and unification of the kingdom
of Norway, towards A.D. 872. But its preliminary discussion of the
misty prehistoric elements of the ' fylkies ' or provinces of the peninsula
before the unifying, and its sifting of traditions, sagas, chronicles and
universal record, make up a most instructive and almost a garrulous talk
all round the deepest and darkest sources of the Norwegian annals.
Saga-Book of the Viking Society 145
Perhaps no man living except Sir Henry could have put together so
extraordinarily interesting an introductory section, at once narrative,
criticism and citation, ranging from the remotest legends up to the
authenticated facts of the ninth century, when the ambition of Gyda,
unwilling to be wife to any one not king of all Norway, impelled a
provincial kinglet to the career which extinguished a whole series of little
folk-kingdoms, and made him as the Swedish King Olaf said 'the great
king in the land.' And the story is a great one, diversified by constant
touches of archaism, mound burial and ship burial, ' the figure of the crow,'
the swords with names, the memories of Charlemagne and the Northmen,
the queer ceremony of abdication by which a king came down to be a jarl,
the aula as ceremonial forum, white horses as emblematic in state pro-
cessions, the building of the Danewirk, the short-lived glory of Dorestadt
as capital of Friesia, and the continual entrance into the sober story of
some vow or eccentric custom or magic episode which it is a pity to
rationalise. The venerable author has packed into his four hours' well-
marshalled talk a magnificent summary of the beginnings of Norway.
FASTI ECCLESIAE SCOTICANAE. The Succession of Ministers in the Church
of Scotland from the Reformation. By Hew Scott, D.D. New
edition, revised and continued to the present time under the super-
intendence of a committee appointed by the General Assembly. Vol.
III. Synod of Glasgow and Ayr. Pp. viii, 536. Large 8vo. Edin-
burgh : Oliver and Boyd. 1920. 255. to subscribers.
THE Committee of the Church of Scotland is to be congratulated on
having overcome the difficulties which have delayed the publication of this
new volume in their large undertaking. It includes the Synod of Glasgow
and Ayr, which embraces Renfrewshire and Dumbartonshire, and portions
of Argyllshire, Lanarkshire and Stirlingshire.
This volume contains a large number of Quoad Sacra parishes as it deals
with perhaps the most densely populated area in Scotland. Its pages are
full of interest. In a work which contains many thousand names and dates
it may be impossible to avoid occasional errors, but the impression which
we receive from a careful perusal of many of the entries is one of great care
taken in the collecting and arrangement of facts and dates. The side-
lights which the entries throw on the history of Scotland are innumerable,
and we are grateful to the promoters for having provided one of the most
useful books of reference. It should be in every public library in Scotland,
and in the principal libraries in the United Kingdom.
THE INFLUENCE OF MAN ON ANIMAL LIFE IN SCOTLAND. A Study in
Faunal Evolution. By James Ritchie, M.A., D.Sc. Pp. xvi, 550,
with 90 Illustrations and 8 Maps. Large 8vo. Cambridge : at the
University Press. 1920. 285. net.
THIS is a fascinating volume which merits the study of all naturalists and
has also its interest for the historian. Beginning with animal life in
Scotland when man first arrived here, we have an account of the red deer,
146 Ritchie : Influence of Man on Animal Life
the boar and the otter amongst other animals which then abounded, but
there are no traces of domestic animals at that period. Later there are
traces of sheep, oxen, dogs and, perhaps last of all amongst the larger
animals, the horse. Then follows a study of classes of animals ; and the
change in type between, for instance, the wild ancestors of sheep and the
modern Cheviot or black faced is both curious and interesting. In the
same way the evolution of cattle, the horse and the smaller domestic
animals is traced.
The permanent struggle between man and animals is fully dealt with.
We are apt to forget that in some cases animals have been deliberately
exterminated in order to secure the safety of man and his stock, while in
other instances the stock has been enormously depleted to provide food or
skins for man's use. On the other hand, the history of the way in which
other animals have been protected and their growth encouraged, either for
their use or for sport, is discussed at length. These are only a few of the
points contained in this curious and delightful book. It it not within the
sphere of this Review to consider the many scientific problems with which
it deals, but for the light it throws upon the history of Scotland we cordially
welcome it.
Professor Morison's disquisition on Nationality and Common Sense as a
Queen's University Bulletin from Kingston, Canada, emphasises the
limitations of nationalism and the necessity of sane restrictions. ' The
whirlwind of national enthusiasm ' must not be allowed to blow the roof
off the world, which needs internationalism to keep it on. The League of
Nations is viewed as a splendid and practical aspiration.
The Old Glasgow Club has just issued (one volume, demy 8vo, pp.
88, with two illustrations) its Transactions for Session 1919-20.
This issue contains papers by Lord Scott Dickson on ' The Covenanters
and the General Assemblies of the Kirk held at Glasgow in 1610 and
1638' ; on 'Bishop Jocelyn ; or Glasgow in the Twelfth Century,' by the
late Rev. James Primrose ; and papers on Ballads ; on the Burgh of
Pollokshaws ; and on the Holy Wells in and around Glasgow.
Excellent work has been done by many local associations in gathering
together records of their own localities, and we wish all success to the Old
Glasgow Club in the continuation of its work, which it has now been
carrying on for twenty years.
A well-planned series of Souvenirs of the * Mayflowtr ' Tercentenary^
edited by Rendel Harris (Manchester University Press : Longmans, Green
& Co.) includes the following: (i) 'The Documents concerning the
appraisement of the Mayflower' in May 1624, when the said ship was
in ruinis — words which are perhaps more safely interpreted * dismantled '
than understood as * broken up ' ; (2) ' Refusal of the Leyden Authorities to
expel the Pilgrims' — the date of which the editor has not thought fit to
indicate ; (3) « The Marriage Certificate of William Bradford and Dorothy
May ' — Bradford being subsequently the famous governor of Plymouth ;
(4) ' The Plymouth Copy of the first Charter of Virginia,' dated April
IO, 1606 — from the archives of the English town. Numbers I and 2 are
Current Literature 147
priced at gd. net each, No. 3 at 6d. and No. 4 at is. Each consists of a
reproduction in reduced facsimile accompanied by an accurate translitera-
tion. Professor Harris has also written an attractive essay ' The Finding
of the * Mayflower ' ' (same publishers, price 45. 6d. net) in which he
submits a very tenuous (though not quite impossible) argument for
identifying the timbers of the historic ship in those of an old schooner
built into a barn at Jordans Hostel, Seer Green Halt, Bucks.
The papers of Mr. Westropp in the current volume of the Proceedings
of the Royal Irish Academy (vol. xxxv. section C, Nos. 10-11), on some forts
and other remarkable places connected with the ancient gods and the great
assemblies of the tribes in the county of Limerick, are learned studies in
pagan mythology characteristic of the author. The careful investigation
by the Earl of Kerry on ' The Lansdowne Maps of the Down Survey '
(No. 12) is a very useful contribution and indispensable to the student of
the topographical history of Irish counties. The earl points out the origin
of the name of the Survey of 1654, which has no special affinity to the
county of Down, as an unsophisticated non-Irishman might easily imagine.
It was Sir William Petty who first proposed to measure the whole country
* by instrument ' and to set it * down ' upon paper. The undertaking was
referred to at the time as the ' down ' survey, a description by which it
has been known ever since. In 1810 the Irish Records Commission
reported on the Survey and on such maps as were then known to be in
existence. But in recent years a large collection of maps of the same
Survey was discovered in an old chest at Lansdowne House, whose noble
owner is a lineal descendant of Sir William Petty. These maps have been
cleaned and mounted, identified by the Earl of Kerry and set out in a
catalogue under counties for easy reference. The whole contribution is
very praiseworthy.
The English Historical Review for October opens with Dr. Round's subtle
and diversified examination of the office of Sheriff in Norfolk, with many
illuminating facts on castles, castle-guard and castellana, not the least
curious of which is the tendency for a sheriff to take a new surname from his
castle. Mr. E. R. Adair searches out the distinctive features of the galley
in the English service in the sixteenth century, till the superior fitness of
Elizabethan sail-craft under Drake and his successors was established and the
Mediterranean oar-driven type disappeared from the English Navy. Miss
F. Evans usefully schedules the salaries of the seventeenth century secretaries
of state, and Mr. G. N. Clark analyses and describes the Dutch missions to
England in 1689. The advent of William III. had made a firm under-
standing necessary, and as the outcome of the negotiations was almost a
unification of sea powers by which England considerably profited, the four
conventions constituting a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance deserve the
investigation Mr. Clark has devoted to them. Documents printed by
various contributors include charters to boroughs near the Welsh border in
1256, papers on Wycliffe's canonry, letters of 1469-1471 to Oxford Uni-
versity, and political correspondence manifesting the honesty of Wellington's
action as ambassador at Verona in 1822.
148 Current Literature
The announcement now made that Mr. Reginald L. Poole has retired
from the editorship will be received with widespread regret in the circles of
history. In his hands, in part from 1895 until 1901 and in sole charge
from 1901 until now, the Review has maintained a foremost place among
the historical journals of the world. Comparisons are sometimes difficult as
well as odious, but there can be neither impropriety nor ungraciousness to-
wards other periodicals in repeating the opinion implied in many criticisms
in these columns, that Mr. Poole had made and kept for his review the
premier position. His release from an office of such laborious responsibility
will it is to be hoped give him the more leisure and opportunity for his
personal specialities of medieval study. There is happily therefore no need
for the accent of farewell. As for Mr. Clark his welcome is assured, and
we can only wish him a continued success for the magazine commensurate
with its past.
History for July last opens with a paper by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers on
* History and Ethnology,' in which the present tendency to give more
attention to institutions and ideas and less to details of transactions between
individuals and nations is pointed out. The application, however, by Dr.
Rivers's imaginary Melanesian visitor to these islands of the terms Whiskey
people to typify the early Celtic element, Beer people the Anglo-Saxon, and
Wine people the Norman, gives grounds for comments unfavourable to the
swarthy scientist's powers of analysis. At all events, before generalizing it
would be well for him to throw aside his horror of literary sources so far as
to consult a paper by the late Dr. Joseph Robertson on ' The Use of Wine
among the Lower Orders in Scotland (especially the Western Hebrides) in
the Seventeenth Century ' (Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,
iii. 424). At that time wine had been, and was, the staple and somewhat
unlimited drink of the western islesmen, and indeed of Scotland generally.
In 1616 and again in 1622 the Privy Council prohibited first its use and
afterwards its importation and sale in the isles. Written records cannot
be ignored. Machiavelli as political thinker is criticised by Mr. Edward
Armstrong, who inclines to look upon him as creator of modern Italian
prose rather than as philosophical writer. 'Historical Revisions' include
« The Petition of Right' by E. R. Adair and 'The Balance of Power' by
Prof. A. F. Pollard, who points out the danger of using as a guiding
principle of thought and action a phrase which, owing to an entire change
of affairs, has ceased to connote the ideas of its original framers. There
are the usual reviews of books. J. E.
In History for October Mr. Norman Baynes admirably surveys recent
books on Roman History. He commends Ferrero but deprecates his
tendency to imperial biography as the essential method of imperial history.
Also he commends Donald McFadyen's recent treatise (Chicago 1920) on
the ' History of the title Imperator.' Mr. Geoffrey Callender discussing
the evolution of early Tudor sea-power illustrates the enormous change
made by adapting artillery to ships. Professor Stenton re-surveys the episode
of ' the Danes in England,' tracing the effects of the settlements in the
Danelaw in the matter of tenure and place-names, but not bringing much
novel light otherwise.
Current Literature 149
The American Historical Review for October celebrates its semi-jubilee
and the editor, Prof. Franklin Jameson, is well warranted in characterising
the twenty five volumes produced since 1895 as being 'at least an impres-
sive monument to one generation of historical workers in America.' Saluta-
tions of goodwill and good wishes are heartily tendered to the editor and
management. The Review has made itself invaluable and its interest can
be very little less to readers in Great Britain than to Americans.
Attention on this side will rightly be given in the present number to Sidney
B. Fay's article entitled ' New Light on the Origins of the World War,' for
it seems to demonstrate by recently recovered documents of first class
authority that in the last fateful hours preceding the declaration of war by
Germany it was Austria and not Germany which was the obstinate power.
Now that the trial of the Kaiser has apparently been expunged from the
programme of the Allies, the new body of evidence tending to lessen his
responsibility (coming as it does from an American critic using the latest
German publications), may perhaps have a less reluctant reception in the
courts of history than would have been accorded a couple of years ago.
Robert Schuyler, under the rhetorical title ' The Recall of the Legions,'
discusses the fluctuations in British colonial policy between 1776 and 1784,
but possibly his limits of space have prevented his making handsomer allow-
ance for the imperfections of political vision. Frederic Paxson, under the
heading 'The American War Government 1917-1918,' describes the
constitutional machinery and expedients resorted to in the crisis of the
struggle. He styles the activities of that time an attempt to pass ' from
the doctrine of individualism and free competition to one of centralised
national co-operation,' a system symbolised in the phrase 'work or fight.'
In the number of the Revue Historique for March-April, M. S. Reinach
presents an interesting hypothesis as to the presence of Buddhist elements
in the legend of St. Francis of Assisi. The most important contribution
is the first instalment of a study of Pierre du Chastel by M. Roger Doucet,
in which the writer presents a well-balanced estimate of the role played
by that courtier-humanist in the inner circle of the Court of Francis I.
The number for May-June contains the remainder of M. Doucet's study
and a further instalment of M. Halphen's critical commentary on the
history of Charlemagne. The reader is sometimes tempted to question the
expediency of publishing by instalments an elaborate critical study like that
of M. Halphen, but a justification is probably to be found in the prohibitory
expense of independent publication. The two numbers contain the usual
valuable summaries of contemporary historical studies, the periods covered
being French history from 1494 to 1660, Swedish history, and Christian
antiquities.
The most interesting items in the French Quarterly for June are found
in the Variltls^ in which M. Rudler deals with ' L'Angleterre et Jeanne
d'Arc,' M. Charlier with a 'source' of Chateaubriand, and M. Maingard
with Leconte de Lisle.
The Revue Historique for July-August contains the first instalment of a
study by M. Boissonade of the commercial relations between France and the
British Isles in the Sixteenth Century, and an account of the unfortunate
150 Current Literature
British expedition to Buenos Ayres in 1807. Both writers make use of
well-known sources, and their conclusions present no novelty. A summary
of the publications of the past eight years on the history of Italy from 1789
to 1920 is provided by M. Bourgin. The first volume of the new edition
of S. Theresa's Letters in English by the Benedictines of Stanbrook receives
a critical notice from M. Morel Fatio, and M. Albert Waddington writes
with enthusiasm of the new life of * William the Silent ' by the distinguished
Dutch historian, P. J. Blok. The announcement is made of the con-
tinuation of Lavisse's standard History of France to the conclusion of the
late war. The concluding volume has been entrusted to MM. Bidou and
Gauvin. two well-known publicists.
D.B.S.
Students of Church History will welcome the re-appearance of the
admirable Revue d1 'Histoire ecclesiastique, a worthy mirror of the learning of
Louvain. It rises like the phoenix from the ashes and the current number
is a reconstruction from MSS. and 'proofs' of the number for July, 1914,
which perished in the conflagration of that year. For English readers the
most important article is that by Pere Martin, O.P., on Uaeuvre thfologique
de Robert de Melau ("I* 1 167), in which the learned Dominican furnishes
an interesting addition to our knowledge of the subject. Since Mr.
Kingsford's article appeared in the Dictionary of National Biography in 1896,
Robert has been dealt with by Grabmann, Anders and P. Martin himself.
The article is based on a careful examination of MSS. hitherto unidentified
and the author indicates the important conclusions which may be drawn
from the MSS. in the British Museum. He assigns an important role to
Robert in the history of theological speculation and, while recognising the
debt which he owed to Hugh of Saint Victor, he concludes that * son ceuvre
pr/sente des caracteres particuliers et surpasse a plus d'un titre les travaux des
maftres anttrieurs? These include Peter Lombard, as P. Martin assigns
Robert's writings to the years 1152-1160. Robert has been generally
classed as a realist, though Haurcau had doubts on the subject, but P. Martin
takes the view that he belonged to no school and that he founded none.
Now that it is evident that the principal sources for a study of this
distinguished English theologian are to be found in London and Oxford, it
is to be hoped that an English scholar will undertake the task of producing
an edition of his Sentences.
D. B. S.
In the Archivum Franciscanum Historicum for January- April; 1920 (xiii.
Fasc. i and 2) Father Andre" Callebaut supplements his previous study of
the nationality of Joannes Duns Scotus. The late character of the tradi-
tion in favour of his Irish origin is proved, and the fifteenth century
testimony to his Scottish birth established by numerous quotations from
philosophers of that century, all agreeing upon his nationality. For
example, in a warm panegyric at Paris in 1448 Dr. William Forilong, who
died at Rome in 1464, speaks of Duns Scotus thus : O doctor subtilis Joannes
dictus de Donis . . . te primitus Scotia genuit . . . O germen ergo Scotie, O Anglie
scientia, O Francie subtilitas, sed O Colonie requies. Again, a manuscript in
Current Literature 151
Bdle of date 1442 calls him Joannes de Scotia. After giving numerous
quotations of a similar character Father Callebaut proceeds to prove from
the Papal archives that in the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
Scoti meant Scots, and Scotia Scotland.
The question whether the Irish origin receives any support from the
philosopher's writings is next answered in decisive fashion. It is shown
that the reference to S. Patrick claimed as having been made by him in his
lectures is due to a tampering with the original, the words Sancti Arnoldl
(a continental saint) having been silently suppressed and S. Patritii sub-
stituted in 1503 by Maurice-du-Port, an Irishman. Lastly, there is added
the testimony of a manuscript preserved in Paris of the early fourteenth
century and therefore contemporary. Here he is called Magister Johannes
de Scotia, Ord. Fr. Min. The two editors — Father Denifle and Monsieur
Chatelain — point out that at that time Scotsmen flocked to Paris in great
numbers as war had closed the English universities to them. Father
Callebaut has discovered another Scot from Duns some years later
graduating at the University there. He is Thomas de Duns Scotus. His
date is 1349.
Thus the nationality of Joannes Duns Scotus is firmly established, and
John Major's statement, which is not, but might have been adduced, is
proved to be correct. It may be noted that the renaissance and the
Reformation changed the angle from which scholastic philosophy was
viewed, and Scotsmen became the reverse of keen to claim as a country-
man one of the acknowledged leaders of scholastic thought and methods.
Hence the pretensions of the other claimants — England and Ireland — were
allowed to pass unchallenged, and those of the latter country especially
made headway.
At the end of his paper Father Callebaut designates Duns, the philo-
sopher's native town, as village du comt/ Berwick (s/V), and allows the river
Tweed to figure as the Twee ; but these slight blemishes detract little from
the force of a closely-knit, well-documented and convincing argument.
JOHN EDWARDS.
Notes and Communications
A CURIOUS WORD FOR GREAT-NEPHEW (S.H.R. xviii. 65).
« Eiroy ' is the English form of Gaelic iarogha, great-grandson. « Vcroy '
is probably in error for < vcoy ' = vicoy = Gaelic mhic-ogha; in which
connexion cf. mac-mic, grandson. A. W. JOHNSTON.
Mr. William Angus of H.M. Register House, Edinburgh, states that the
word is by no means uncommon. Burns uses it in his Dedication to
Gavin Hamilton, and it is entered in Jamieson's Dictionary under * Ier-oe.'
It is also to be found in Johnston of Wariston's Diary (Scottish History
Society), vol. ii. p. 96, and in Habakkuk Bisset's Raiment of Courtis
(Scottish Text Society), vol. i. page 62, line 28.
The Duke of Argyll states that only once has he found it used in
Highland charters, and that was in the Writ of 1609 referred to in S.H.R.
xviii. page 65.
THE DALKEITH PORTRAIT OF MARY QUEEN OF
SCOTS (S.H.R. xviii. 32). All who are interested in the portraiture of
Mary Queen of Scots will have welcomed Miss Steuart's article on the
Dalkeith portrait and the reproduction of the portrait itself. Not all, how-
ever, will find themselves able to agree with her conclusions.
Miss Steuart compares the portrait with the well-known chalk drawing
generally attributed to Clouet and preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale,
Paris. It is true that the ropes of pearls are found in both and some-
what similarly arranged. The Clouet portrait is known to be dated
between 1559 and 1561 when the Queen, then Dauphine, was aged 17
to 19. If Miss Steuart merely urged a general resemblance between the
features in the Clouet and the Dalkeith portraits, it might not be easy to
counter her view, but she goes further and dates the Dalkeith portrait as
belonging to the same period as the Clouet sketch. I find it impossible
to agree with Miss Steuart that the Dalkeith portrait represents a woman
of approximately the same age as the Clouet portrait or that it could
possibly be that of a girl of 19. I regard the Dalkeith portrait as that of
a woman aged not less than 25 and not more than 30. On what further
grounds does Miss Steuart base her case ?
First, on the carcan composed of diamonds with entredeux of pearls, one
of which was given back to the Crown of France before Mary returned
to Scotland, because the carcan shown in the portrait and also the one
restored to the French Crown Jewels both possess pearls set in clusters of
five. This is not a very convincing identification.
The Dalkeith Portrait of Queen Mary 153
Second, on the cross with seven diamonds which may have been
similarly restored to the French Crown Jewels ; but Miss Steuart admits
that she cannot identify this cross precisely. It is just this cross and its
position which afford some ground for doubt. If one examines all the
authentic portraits reproduced by Mr. Lionel Cust in his book Authentic
Portraits of Mary Queen of Scots ipoj, one observes : (i) that no portrait
appears to show a cross, but most show a crucifix ; (2) that in no portrait
is the crucifix shown hanging round the neck, but generally suspended so
as almost to reach the waist.
Unfortunately, however, the case for the genuineness of the Dalkeith
portrait breaks down completely in another way. If it is compared with
the celebrated ' Carleton ' portrait in the collection of the Duke of
Devonshire at Chatsworth, which portrait is quite unreservedly and quite
properly condemned by Cust, it will be at once apparent that the Dalkeith
portrait strongly resembles the Carleton type. The features may be
described as identical ; the ropes of pearls are present in both, though not
exactly in the same position ; the position of both arms is identical ; in
both pictures the left hand holds a very similar rose (which incidentally
is not in any other portrait) ; the costume is admittedly different. Cust
gives (p. 133-136) a full account of the history of this c impostor' portrait
which is first heard of in 1713. Of the Dalkeith portrait it is known
that it was at Dalkeith about two centuries ago. Neither of the two
portraits can trace its pedigree with any certainty before 1700. Sir Lionel
Cust sums up against the Carleton portrait as being one not even intended
to represent Mary. Probably the same is true of the Dalkeith portrait,
and I suspect that the reason why no reference to it is made by the late
Sir George Scharf or Mr. Cust is that they both recognised it as a mere
copy of the Carleton type.
But the main case against the Dalkeith portrait rests not on comparisons
but on the picture itself. The features are wrong. The Queen, as shown
by authentic portraits, had long narrow eyes, a thin nose, and thin lips and
arched eyebrows : none of these characteristics are found in the Dalkeith
portrait. Moreover, the costume is wrong. If the ruff round her neck is
compared with other ruffs in XVI century pictures, it will be found that
it is too broad for 1560 : it would not be earlier than 1576. The head-
dress also does not resemble any of so early a period. It is not easy to
judge of the technique of the picture from the reproduction. Detailed
examination of the original picture would probably reveal other ana-
chronisms.
It would be a much pleasanter task to welcome a new and authentic
portrait than to destroy an ideal, but sometimes the latter must be done.
WALTER SETON.
University College, London.
MACBETH or MACHETH (S.H.R. xvii. 155, 338), has been pro-
pounded as a problem by Professor Sanford Terry for which he awaits a
satisfactory explanation as to what MacBeth is ' doing in this otherwise
exclusive gallery of MacHeth rulers ' in the province of Moray.
154 MacBeth or MacHeth
The MacBeth-MacHeth riddle emerges at or rather after King
MacBeth's time. It is a veritable labyrinth without a thread till one goes
far enough back. Beth in variant form but not Heth is the original root
name and still is the essential and distinguishing part of MacBeth. Work-
ing forward one comes gradually to the compound MacBeth, with a small
b of course. Moderns are mostly responsible for the capital in the middle
of the name, and it tends to prevent confusion. To my thinking the
MacHeths are MacBeths by indirect descent, and I support my conclusion
by the following facts. Reference is made to
King Macbeth mac finlay (Mar. Scot. c. 1028).
„ Malbeth or Maelbeathe (Ang. Sax, Chr. under date 1031-1054).
„ Macbethad (Flor. of Wor. c. 1118).
„ Machethad (S. of D. c. 1129).
„ Macbeth (D of M. c. 1 142).
„ Machetad (R. of Hov. c. 1201).
„ Macheth (John of Evers" c. 1265).
„ Macbet and Macbeth (Chron. of Me/rose).
Then in the charters by which the same king conveys gifts to the Keledei
of Lochleven /; and b are twice found in juxtaposition thus — Machbet —
but in the middle of the charter Makbeth is found and that plainly
determines what the other two are.
Take another instance from the charters. • It concerns a MacBeth,
Judex or Sheriff, and his designation gives the following result, in favour
of MacBeth :
Maledoun, son of MacBead, c. 1128
Maldouen and Maldoueni, son of Macobeth
Meldoinneth filium Machedath.
At that same period there is another Macbeth, Thane of Falkland, who
may be the father of this Maldouen as well as of Cormac * a son of Macbeath '
who is mentioned in Ethelred's charter to the Keledei. Whether that be
so or not, it is clear that Machedath is a MacBeth. The same result
comes out in the undernoted example :
Macbeth Macktorphin, c. 1150
Macbeth Mactorpin
Macbet „
Machet „
Baron Macbeth of Liberton lived at this period and may be the above-
mentioned man, but if not, he has his name spelled in variant form, as
Macbet, c. 1141-52
Macbether
Macbetber
Mac bead
Mai bead
Makbet
Mai bet
MacBeth or MacHeth 155
In the Signet Library one had occasion to verify the Latin facsimile of
Macbetber. That is the correct transliteration, but the editor changes it
into Macbet Vere. One can easily see how another could make it
Macbether, for the letters b and h are almost alike, but there is no doubt
that Macbeth is intended.
Then as to Malcolm MacBeth. According to J. Stevenson's transla-
tion of the Chron. of Holy rood under date 1157 Malcolm's name is given
as Malcolm Machel — a son of fire truly. Of course if the Macheths can
be changed into MacKays they may be 'sons of fire,' but they have a
better heritage among the Macbeths, their real kindred. In the footnote
to the same editor's translation of the Chron. of Melrose under date 1134,
Malcolm is referred to as < the son of Macbeth.' Further, in the abbreviated
edition of the Chron, of Holyrood under date 1157 one finds Malcolm
Macbet cum rege Scottorum pacificatus eft, but according to Mr. A. O.
Anderson he is also called Macbeth in Bouterwek's edition of the same
extended Chronicle (38), and it is by the same authority we are told that
Malcolm Macbeth died Earl of Ross 1168 (42). The Fraser Chronicles
also support the reading Milcolm Mackbeth and likewise refer to Donald
son of Melkolm Mckbeth.
Reviewing these lists where MacBeth and MacHeth are combined, it
surely becomes manifest that b and h have simply been confused by
similarity of writing in the past. Even now if any one writes Macbeth
frequently with a small b he will soon find a possible Macheth unless he
be careful with his pen. JOHN MACBETH, B.D.
Newton Manse, Dalkeith.
MACBETH, MACHETH (S. H.R. xvii. 155, 338). These two names
may be two Latin (English) renderings of the same Gaelic name
M'Bheatha, * Son of Life,' a persona! name originally, not patronymic.
MacKay is the English form of Gaelic M'Aoidh, from Aoidh, fire.
(See Macbain's Gaelic Dictionary.") In support of the above suggestion may
be quoted Lawrie's Early Scottish Charters. Maledoun is referred to as
Macocbeth (p. 63, 1128), Machedath (p. 67, 1128), MacBead(p. 78, 1131-
1132). MacTurfin is mentioned as Macbet (p. 120, 1143), Machet
(p. 166, 1150), and Macbeth (171, 195, 1150). The Gaelic name
M'Bheatha was thus rendered in Latin (and English) as MacBeth and
MacHeth, one letter of the aspirate B (B H) being used in each case.
A. W. JOHNSTON.
29 Ashburnham Mansions, Chelsea, S.W.
QUEEN MARGARET TUDOR. Sir Bruce Seton, in his paper
* The Distaff Side ' (Scottish Historical Review, xvii. pp. 284-5), says that
Queen Margaret obtained in 1527 a separation < a mensa et thoro ' from her
second husband the Earl of Angus, and then, l although such a separation
did not permit a fresh marriage,' immediately married Henry Stewart, after-
wards Lord Methven. Riddell says (Inquiry into the Law and Practice in
Scottish Peerages, i p. 470) that the Queen's marriage with Angus was dis-
156 Queen Margaret Tudor
solved by the Consistorial Court of St. Andrews in 1525. 'It was upon
the valid ground of a precontract between him and another lady' ('a daughter
of Tracquair,' says Hume of Godscroft, by whom he had a daughter Jean
Douglas, who did not become legitimate, but who married Patrick Lord
Ruthven). He says earlier (pp. 420 et seq.} : ' They were accordingly
divorced simpliciter ; yet, at the same time, owing to the exclusive
exception of the Queen's ignorance of the latter circumstance, and hence
bona fides on her part, there was a special finding of the legitimacy of Lady
Margaret Douglas, their sole issue.' Its seems, however, that the St.
Andrews proceedings were not final as the ultimate decree of divorcement
was pronounced nth March, 1527-8 (Fraser, The Douglas Book, ii. 212,
where the year is given as 1528), after three years proceedings by Peter
Cardinal of Ancona, the Judge appointed to enquire into the matter by
Pope Clement VII. Without waiting for this news (the dates are very
complex and are stated differently by different authorities) the Queen
married Henry Stewart. Her brother Henry VIII. wrote, by Wolsey, to her
later of the * shameless sentence sent from Rome ' and, reminding her of
' the divine ordinance of inseparable matrimony first instituted in Paradise,'
bade her avoid 'the inevitable damnation threatened against advoutrers.
(A. H. Pollard Henry Fill. pp. 209-210).
A. FRANCIS STEUART.
DUNDRENNAN ABBEY (S.H.R. xviii. 57). Owing to a typist's
error a few words were omitted in the review of Learmonth's Kirkcud-
brightshire. The passage should have read, ' Dundrennan, the parent
abbey of Sweetheart Abbey, founded by Devorgilla Balliol.'
A CORPUS OF RUNIC INSCRIPTIONS. Professor Baldwin
Brown and Mr. Bruce Dickins, writing from the University of Edinburgh,
request us to ask that readers of this Review will kindly bring under their
notice any newly discovered runic inscription and any example which
they are not likely to know. Runically inscribed objects contained in
the larger and better known public collections or which are published in
archaeological works of national scope Professor Baldwin Brown will
already have on his list ; but as regards those in private hands or in local
collections of the smaller type he will be very glad of information, as he
and his colleague are preparing for publication by the Cambridge Univer-
sity Press an Annotated Corpus of Runic Inscriptions in Great Britain,
on or in stone, bone, wood or metal.
The
Scottish Historical Review
VOL. XVIII., No. 71
APRIL, 1921
On £ Parliament ' and c General Council '
PROFESSOR RAIT has examined in this Review the
personnel of our national assemblies. Dr. Neilson, in his
introduction to the Acta Dominorum Concilii, vol. ii., recently
published by the Record authorities, has done much to discourage
historians who are content to repeat the statement that the Court
of Session was founded on the model of the Parlement of Paris,
or, at all events, to convince them that a great deal more remains
to be said. It is now becoming clear that the development of
our courts and assemblies will gradually assume an intelligible
form in response to patient study. The field is large ; the
work intricate and toilsome. The present brief inquiry,1
obviously partial and tentative, may serve to suggest a line of
investigation which is somewhat new, and which in the end may
prove interesting even to those who are not mainly devoted to
Scottish history.
Thomas Thomson did not complete the first, and final,
volume of his Acts of Parliament. Cosmo Innes issued it in 1 844,
without * the benefit of Mr. Thomson's advice,' 2 and prefixed
* a list of Parliaments and General Councils.' No attempt was
made, however, to distinguish the two assemblies, or to explain a
difference of denomination which might have aroused curiosity.
1 The following notes are intended to be no more than an indication of one or
two of the many problems connected with Scottish institutions which require
attention.
ZA.P. i. 58.
S.H.R. VOL. XVIII. L
158 Professor R. K. Hannay
The Modus tenendi parliamentum opens with the remark that
summonitio parliament praecedere debet primum diem parliamenti
per quadraginta dies. Robert I., in granting the Isle of Man
to Randolph, requires personalem appresentiam ad parliamenta
nostra . . . infra regnum nostrum tenenda per rationabiles quadraginta
dierum summonitiones.1 David II. held a consilium of the three
estates at Scone in I357,2 little more than a month after his
liberation. Hailes and others wrongly describe this as a
' parliament.' There was already some difference as between
' parliament ' and ' council ' in the formalities of summons.
In 1363 the assembled prelati and proceres undertook to meet,
on the return of ambassadors from England, in response to royal
letters sub quocunque sigillo and to treat ac si essent per quadraginta
dies ad parliamentum citati legitime, excepcionem aut excusacionem
aliquam de temporis brevitate vel alias non facturi?
Parliamentum had special competence. It was necessary,
for instance, in order to pronounce the final sentence in appeal
by falsing of dooms. In 1368 we hear that omnes processus Jacti
super judiciis contradictis quorum discussio et determinatio ad
parliamentum pertinent presententur cancellario ante parliamentum
proximum tenendum ; and on the same occasion a doom from the
justice-court of Dundee was under consideration. It was urged
that the said court precesserat hoc parliamentum tantum per
quatuordecim dies, whereas ipsi (the protesters) a tempore justiciarie
tente habere deberent ad hoc quadraginta dierum spacium ipso jure.
The day was found not legitimus ; and the parties were referred
ad parliamentum proximum.* In 1368 the king sits in full state
pro tribunali on dooms (judicia contradictd] ; but, as it is Lent
and the custom of the realm forbids such sentences during that
season, decision is postponed usque proximum parliamentum?
In 1503, it may be noted, an act anent falsing of dooms provided
that the king should depute thirty or forty persons with power
' as it war in ane parliament,' the court to be set on forty days.6
The supreme court of ' parliament ' necessarily conformed
to courts below in respect of notice. In the Assise Willelmi 7
we find (de placitis justiciarii et vicecomitis) that every sheriff
ad caput quadraginta dierum . . . placita sua tenebit : that the
justiciar could not hold placita corone within a sheriffdom nisi
ad caput quadraginta dierum \ and that secundum assisam regni
1 R.M.S. i. app. i. 32. *A.P. i. 491. *lbid. 493.
*lbid. 504-5. *lbid. 507. *lbid. ii. 246.
7 Ibid. i. 377.
c Parliament ' and c General Council ' 159
reus juste debet habere diem ad caput quadraginta dierum ad minus.
Similarly, in the Modus procedendi in itinere justiciarie 1 we find
that ' betuix the dittay and the air of reson sulde be xl days
at the personis mycht be arrestit lauchfully ande breves mycht
be purchest ande summondis maide in lauchfull tyme ' : again,2
probentur citaciones huiusmodi fuisse legittime facte et per spacium
quadraginta dierum ad minus, aliter non valent. The rule is
illustrated by abbreviations in exceptional cases under James I.
and James II.3
The earlier records do not seem to throw much additional
light on the special competence of * parliamentum.' Upon its
general function as a supreme court one need not dwell ; but
it may be interesting to observe in 1398 * that ilke yhere the
kyng sal halde a parlement swa that his subiectis be servit of the
law,'4 and that so late as 1452 the regality court of St. Andrews,
granted to Bishop Kennedy, is styled parliamentum solitum et
consuetum? In 1369 parlamentum dealt with ea que concernunt
communem justiciam, videlicet judicia contradicta, questiones et
querelas alias que debeant per parlamentum terminari :* in 1368
it was found that certain parties should not be heard in * parlia-
ment,' quod ambe partes sunt ad communem legem ad prosequendum
et defendendum in curiis aliis secundum ordinem et formam juris.'1
A century later, in 1473, two persons are ' to declare the daily
materis that cummys befor the kyngis hienes that as yit thare is
na law for the decisioun of thame,' and to report to next * parlia-
ment * for ratification and approval.8 In 1433 we find a breve
of ' miln leidis ' which is to have course till * the next parlia-
ment.' 9
It is at a later stage that we find definite indication of the
function of ' parliament ' in respect of treason. In 1515 John,
Lord Drummond, was suspected of correspondence with England.
He appeared at the Council, July 1 1, on the eve of a Parliament,
July 12, and, 'for the conservatioun of the privelege of the
barounis of Scotland and of him,' declined to answer before the
Lyon King, but was prepared to do so * befor his competent
juge and at place convenient.' The king's advocate took
instrument ' that the lord Drummond refusit the xl dais of
. 705. *Ibid. 708.
\d. ii. 23, 6 ; 320, 2 ; 35*. * Ibid. i. 573.
* Ibid. ii. 74. *Ibid.\, 507-8; cf. 534, 547.
''Ibid. 505. 6Ibid. ii. 105.
9 Ibid. 22 ; cf. Pollard, Evolution of Parliament, p. 39.
160 Professor R. K. Hannay
privelege that all lordis and barounis aucht to have be the law
to ansuer apoun tresoun and was content to underlie the law
for the crymes imput to him in this present parliament without
ony exceptioun, he gettand ane assis of condigne persons.'
Whereupon Arran asked instrument ' in name of al my lordis
and barounis temporale that albeit my lord Drummond was
content to underlie the law incontinent for the tresoun imput
to him and refusit the privelege of xl days granted to barounis
in sic caisis that the samin suld turne thaim to na preiudice
quhen sic thingis suld happin to ony of thame.1 In 1517
* parliament ' was called on forty days by precepts of Chancery,
with summonses of treason * apon the personis dilatit of the
slauchter of lord la Bastie,' and for any other cases 'of treason.2
A few years later the period of notice is expressly stated to be
customary. On March 13 'parliament' was set for July 24
' upoun the premunitioun of xl dais, as us is and efferis theruntill ';
but proclamation was not to be made till forty-five days before
the appointed date.3 The Clerk Register and the Justice Clerk,
writing in 1559, distinguish two forms of process in treason,
(i) before the King in ' parliament,' and (2) before the Justice
General and an assise, unfortunately without explaining the
principle of application ; but they add that condemnation in
the latter court has the same force as if it had been in * parlia-
ment.' 4
There was a curious incident in 1514, involving, apparently,
no case of treason. On September 2 1 the Council proposed a
* parliament ' at Edinburgh for November 17. Queen Margaret
and the Douglas faction projected a ' parliament ' at Perth.
The director of Chancery had the necessary quarter-seal, and
supported Margaret. On October 23 he was ordered by the
Council to produce the seal, that precepts might be directed to
* all personis at aw presens in the parliament ' ; otherwise the
lords would command a new engraving. On October 26 the
Council ordained precepts to be delivered on October 28 —
a clear twenty days before the meeting.5 This is interesting,
because Sir Geo. Mackenzie in his Institutions says that ' con-
ventions ' of the estates in his time were called on twenty days ; 6
and the ' convention ' has a continuity with the older ' general
council.' Loss of the record conceals the technical term entered
1 Act. Dom. Con. (MS.), July n, 1515. * Ibid. Sept. 28, 1517.
*lbM. March 13, 1524-5. * Discours JEscosse, Ban. Club, 18 ff.
6 A.D.C. Sept. 18, Oct. 23-26, 1514. 6 Cf. Robertson, Statuta, i. 143 n.
4 Parliament ' and £ General Council ' 161
in 1514. 'Parliament' may have been used on the plea of
force and fraud, or on the strength of public opinion ; but a
sentence on treason or on a doom would have been questionable.
Possibly notice of twenty days was held sufficient for the main
purpose of declaring Margaret no longer tutrix : ' general
council ' was competent in 1388 to make Fife guardian, and in
1398 to appoint Rothesay lieutenant.1
Towards the close of the sixteenth century the history and
status of * general council,' for reasons which will soon appear,
puzzled even the Clerk Register. In 1587, on the practical
question of printing the Acts of Parliament, he inquired : * In
the actis alreddy imprentit thair is sundry actis apperandly not
maid in parliament bot in generall counsell : think ye thame of
like validitie as actis of parliament ? ' 2 Craig writes : * What
then, it will be asked, of those statutes which are made in con-
ventions of the estates or orders outside parliaments ? Will
such statutes have the force of laws ? I do not think that these
either [he has been speaking of acts of privy council] have equal
force with acts of parliament : otherwise there would be no
point in summoning parliaments, if what was done outside
them had the same strength and validity ; although I am aware
that acts of convention not only have the authority of laws but
by old custom were observed as equivalent to laws, especially
when parliaments were not in use ; for at that stage these con-
ventions were in place of parliaments.' 3
The * consilium ' of David II. in 1357 must have been called
on less than forty days, and the three estates were represented : 4
in 1363 there is an implied difference, in respect of the seal
appended to writs of summons and the period of notice, between
parliamentum and consilium:' Yet there is a sense in which
parliamentum may be generale consilium^ as in 1368 when it
deliberated for four days on relations with England.6 In 1369,
when a commission was appointed, while the rest had licence
to depart, the original constituent assembly acted by way of
generale consilium^ and the commission appointed was consilium
generale? The transposition is not accidental. Consilium
generale is applied to the whole commission, including certain
persons nominated by the king. In the first ' parliament ' of
1 A.P. i. 556, 572. 25a///. Par!. Papers, i. 35.
3 Jus FeuJale, i. 8, 10 (translated).
^A.P. i. 491. &lbld. 493.
6 Ibid. 5035. 7 Ibid. 534, cf. 508.
1 62 Professor R. K. Hannay
James I. (1424), which proceeded by commission, there was
a case anent possession of the priory of Coldingham. The
presides or presidentes parliament^ as the committee on justice,
gave decreet ; instructions were then given to the rightful prior
per dominum regem et suum consilium ; the whole finding — decreet
and instructions — was then incorporated as an actum parliament^
The extract, at Durham, has above the tag of the seal actum
consilii generalis? In 1368 there were two ' parliaments,' at
the second of which persons were chosen ad parliamentum
tenendum. In both cases David II. speaks of nostrum consilium
in parliament? It may be supposed, therefore, that consilium
generate in this connexion came to be used of the electe persone,
or commission, sitting finally as one body; for in 1369 the
special committee on justice is to be ready ante penultimum
diem parliament? and the 'act' of 1424 anent Coldingham,
embodying a decreet of the judicial committee, bears traces of
having been * pronuncit ' — as the later technical term had it —
at a final meeting of the whole commission. In any case this
use of consilium generale seems to be transitory, and relative
perhaps to the fact that the commission of * parliament ' was a
body subdivided by committee, meeting finally in joint session.
There is, however, a use of consilium generale in which there is
an implied, and sometimes an express distinction between
consilium generale and parliamentum. In 1384 the three estates
were gathered tanquam ad consilium generale? Prelates and
their procurators attended, others of the clergy, earls, barons,
and burgesses.6 There were no judicial sentences, though
measures were taken to improve the administration of justice.
In 1385 we have two consilia generalia: in the second Carrick
isfresiaexSy like James II. in 1443.' By 1388 we have express
reference to a distinction. The three estates in consilium generale
made Fife guardian ; and his conduct would be reviewed by
consilium generale vet parliamentum — assemblies of the estates
which seem now and hereafter to be viewed as alternative.
Both kinds of meeting are public, for that now held is plenum
consilium, and the audit, which is to be annual, will take place
in pleno parliamexto ve! in generali consilio* Again in 1397 the
estates are in * consail general,' 9 and proceed, somewhat after
the fashion of ' parliament ' in appointing a commission, to
1 A.P. ii. 25. 2 Nat MSS< jj No 65 3 ^/>. j. 532_3.
*lbid. 534<*. *lbid. 550*. *lbid. 55 1£.
Ubi<t. 551, 553; ii. 33. *lbid. i. 555-6. * Ibid. 570.
c Parliament ' and { General Council ' 163
name a smaller body — persone . . . ad consilium nostrum limitate}-
This process seems to be repeated in 1398, when the estates
in * consail generale ' created Rothesay lieutenant for three
years, and a distinction was drawn between the ' consail generale '
and the ' consail special,' the latter apparently a repetition of
the 'limited' council of I397-2 At the same time there is
reference to prospective assemblies of the estates, which may
be ' consail general or parlement.' 3
It stands to reason thatparliamentum, the high court summoned
on forty days, would be cumbrous and unsuitable in cases of
urgency which nevertheless demanded ' general counsel.' In
1357 the consilium had to consider the finance of David's ransom.
In 1363 the promise at Scone to respond to summons sub quo-
cunque sigillo, without taking exception to either time or place,
was given in connexion with English negotiations; and it indicated
the need for an assembly which was representative and also
convenient pro re nata. One of the puncta on which parlia-
mentum was called in 1367 was the question of relations with
England ; and it was decided that if any tolerable conditions
emerged c our lord the King and those of his sworn counsellors
who are more nearly accessible to him at the time are to have
free power in name of the prelates and lords assembled in this
parliament to choose ambassadors and tax their expenses . . .
without calling thereanent parliament or other council whatso-
ever.'4 The next parliament was informed that England
would not negotiate nisi per deliberationem et commissionem
genera/is consilii^ that is by some full and representative meeting
of estates.5 The ' consail generale ' 6 or consilium trium statuum 7
was competent in 1 398 to ordain a tax for ambassadorial expenses,
and in 1423 to authorise agreement with England for the
deliverance of James I.
There is one curious and difficult point which deserves closer
inquiry by scholars. In 1363 it is implied that parliamentum
is associated with a particular locus. From David II. to Robert
III. the vast majority of parliament* are connected with Scone
or, occasionally, Perth. It is interesting, therefore, to observe
that Alexander Cockburn in 1393 owes three capital suits, viz.
at the justice-ayres of Berwick and Edinburgh and at parlia-
1 Ibid. 572. 2 Ibid. 572-3. 3 Ibid. 5 73*.
4 Ibid. 502^ (translated).
503. *lbid. 574. 7 7J/V. 589.
164 Professor R. K. Hannay
mentum nostrum tentum apud Sconam}- Consilium generate^ on
the other hand, moves more freely. We find it at Perth, Stirling,
Linlithgow, and Edinburgh.
When we come to the period succeeding 1424 and the return
of James I. the inquiry becomes very difficult. Though informa-
tion is somewhat fuller, it is not derived directly from original
records of Parliament. Under James I ., according to Thomson's
edition of the Acts^ there were twelve ' parliaments ' and three
' general councils ' ; and eleven of these ' parliaments ' were
at Perth. Under James II. eight of the fifteen ' parliaments '
were at Edinburgh, four at Perth, and three at Stirling ; while
of the thirteen * general councils,' five met at Edinburgh, six
at Stirling, and two at Perth. With James III. and the beginning
of the authentic parliamentary register there is a complete
disappearance of * general council.' All the assemblies recorded
now are * parliaments,' and all but one (Stirling) meet at Edin-
burgh. Under James I. ' parliament ' is closely associated
with Perth; under James III. it becomes as closely associated
with Edinburgh. The transition period of James II. is remark-
able because the estates assemble almost as often in * general
council ' as they do in ' parliament.'
If our information does not enable us at present to see all the
bearings of this change, there are one or two intelligible and
important facts. It cannot escape notice that under James I.
* parliament ' and * general council ' are still distinguished both
in the denomination of the assemblies and in the body of the
record.2 At the same time there are indications of contamina-
tion. In March of 1427 the clerk of the consilium generate
twice slips into the term ' parliament ' with reference to the
existing assembly ; 3 and once again, in 1436, he does the same.4
Moreover the meeting at which James endeavoured to carry so
fundamental a measure as the representation of the small barons
and freeholders of the sheriffdom was itself a consilium generate \
and the act repeatedly mentioned the obligation to attend ' in
parliament or general council,' while it implied that both modes
of assembly had been called by the king's * precept.' 5 In 1425,
again, the duty of personal compearance had been affirmed ; 6
1 A. P. 580 : in 1 164 Malcolm IV. speaks of the church at Scone as « founded
in the principal seat of our kingdom ' (364).
2Cf. A.P. ii. 9, c. 8 ; 15, c. 2.
zlb'ut. 15, cc. 4, 10. *lbid. 23, c. 5.
15, c. 2. *lbid. 9, c. 8.
c Parliament ' and c General Council ' 165
and in both the parliamentum and the consilium generate of 1427
the summons is definitely stated to have been equally compre-
hensive in each case, and the fines for absence to have been
imposed.1 The clerk in fact uses exactly the same descriptive
formula.
The policy of James I. in this matter can scarcely be elucidated
without a more careful comparison with current procedure in
England than has as yet been attempted. But it is clear that
the consilium generate at Perth in July, 1428, evoked some
controversy. The French marriage of Princess Margaret was
in question.2 There is special significance, whatever it may
turn out to be, in the phrase consilio generali . . . inchoato ratificato
et approbate tanquam sufficienter vocato et debite premunito? The
natural interpretation is that James, in pursuance of the act
in March, according to which ' all bischoppis abbotis priors
dukis erlis lordis of parliament and banrentis . . . wil be reservit
and summonde to consalis and to parliamentis be his special
precep,' 4 was now trying to modify consilium generate. The
problem requires consideration in the light of what may be
discovered regarding the whole parliamentary policy of the
king. There are signs that he disapproved of the slack attend-
ance, which may have been encouraged by the commission
procedure adopted in 1367 ; and it would be interesting to see
whether his object was to obtain a representative * -parliament '
in which consilium generale in its older form should be merged,
and which might be expected to attend throughout the session
without resort to the appointment of a commission with licentia
ceteris recedendi. The * parliament ' of March 6, 1429, does
not seem to have proceeded by commission. It was still sitting
in considerable force on March 17.*
llbid. 13, 15.
2 Thomas Thomson's heading of the contract (ibid. 26) involves two errors : the
contract was at Perth, and on July 19, as the document shows.
*Ibid. 1 6. *lbld. 15.
5 Ibid. 28, where Thomson's date, March 10, is a mistake. The orthodox view
of the Lords of the Articles requires serious reconsideration. Their probouleutic
function is in place when Parliament does not proceed by commission, and when
business must be digested for a house reluctant to remain long in attendance.
We must not confuse a commission with a probouleutic committee, though there is
obvious contamination. The Lords of the Articles, properly so-called, might be
expected to come into action when James I. sought to abolish the licentia recedendi,
and consequently to accelerate business. The Lords of Articles became a regular
institution ; but procedure by commission did not disappear.
1 66 Professor R. K. Hannay
Whatever were the purposes of James I., there is no visible
alteration in consilium generale during the earlier portion of his
successor's reign. In 1440 suits were called and fines for
absence imposed ; x and the assembly was large enough to
appoint a committee of thirty-one, ' depute be the hale generale
counsaile apon this and othiris divers materies.'2 But the
Parliament of January, 1449, concluded with an ordinance
which seems to be of great interest in view of succeeding develop-
ments.3 There was to be a ' generall counsall ' at Perth in
May. The obligation to compear was to be incumbent upon
those receiving ' the precept of the kingis lettres,' a hint that
all who owed attendance would not necessarily be summoned.
An act had just been passed 4 indicating that summons in causes
' befor the king and his consal ' was competent on fifteen days.
It appears also that the summons must be ' undir the quhite
wax,' and that in the case of this ' general council ' summons
by a pursuer, also under the white wax, must be served on
forty-five days. This is a matter which would demand attention
from anyone engaged in tracing the evolution of the * lords of
council and session.' For the present purpose it is sufficient
to note that the ordinance treats * general council * as a court
— and we know that it appointed an auditorial committee in
civil causes 6 — but a court of narrower competence than ' parlia-
ment,' and subject in some measure to the selective power of
the crown.
That ' general council ' tended at this period to diverge from
* parliament ' and approximate to an enlarged privy council
is an important fact in Scottish constitutional history which
has escaped notice and which should be made the subject of
special investigation. It is the fact which explains the difficulty
the Clerk Register and Sir Thomas Craig had towards the close
of the sixteenth century in estimating the validity of acts in
* general council.' There can be no doubt that the process is
intimately connected with the practice of creating ' lords of
parliament ' ; but what the connexion is must remain for the
present obscure. About the middle of the fifteenth century
there was a great development of the practice. Unfortunately
the Scots Peerage does not contain any excursus or statistical
discussion ; and the particular articles are often vague on the
point, as some of the contributors failed to note useful evidence :
39.
37. *lbid. xii. 22.
c Parliament ' and c General Council ' 1 67
such, for example, as the statement of the Auchinlek Chronicle
that in 1452, ' thar was maid vi or vii lordis of the parliament
and banrentis,' who are named. At all events it is in 1456 that
we have a const/turn generate appearing for the last time upon
what may be called parliamentary record. Even if allowance
is made for defective evidence before 1466, when the extant
register of Parliament begins, it is impossible to ignore the
importance of the fact that after 1466 that record knows nothing
of * general council.' The point has been obscured, perhaps,
by Thomas Thomson, who printed at the head of the Acts under
James V. the minute of a ' generale counsale ' held some weeks
after Flodden, without explaining that he took it from the Acta
Dominorum Concilii?- It may be that in 1464 the clerk described
a considerable assembly of representatives of the estates as
congregatio because he was at a loss for a strictly technical term ; 2
and it should not be overlooked that in 1466 ' summoundis
peremptour ' in actions * befor the king and his counsale ' was
abridged to twenty one days.3 A special register of the acts of
the ' lords of council ' can be traced back to 1469.*
From this period ' general council ' seems to become narrower.
In 1476 the alternative of * parliament or generale consale ' is
still contemplated ; 5 but in 1473 no account of the * generale
consale ' on the conduct of Archbishop Graham appears on
parliamentary record.6 At the very end of James III.'s reign
we learn how ' parliament ' was summoned.7 Besides ' generale
preceptis,' there were ' speciale lettres ' under the signet to
prelates and great lords, indicating the cause of meeting. These
* letters * did not give the forty days' notice required in the case
of the * precepts.' 8 For ' general council,' it would appear,
only letters under the signet were necessary. An examination
of the ' general councils ' under James IV. is not needed to show
that they had become little more than enlarged privy councils.
An inevitable consequence was that the burgh commissaries
tended to drop out of meetings in which business closely affecting
their interests might be transacted ; and there was danger in
the tradition of competence attaching to the older and more
representative assemblies. Thus in 1503 Parliament ordained
* that the commissaris and hedismen of burrowis be warnyt
* Ibid. ii. 281. «/&/. 84.
*Ibid. 85, c. 7 ; cf. 37, c. 1 8. 4 Act. Dom. Con. ii. xcviii.
5 Ibid. 114. 6 Treat. Ace. i. 46.
7 A. P. ii. 184. 8Cf. ibid. 21 3; T.A. i. 113.
1 68 Professor R. K. Hannay
quhen taxtis or contributiouns ar gevin to haif ther avise thir-
intill as ane of the thre estatis of the realme.'1 In 1563 it was
enacted that five or six of the principal provosts and bailies
should ' be warnit to all conventiounis that sail happin the
quenis grace ... to conclude upone peax or weir ... or making
or granting of generall taxatiounis.' 2 In 1567 the provosts and
commissaries were to be summoned to any ' generate con-
ventioun ' on the weighty affairs of the realm and ' in speciale
for generale taxtis or extends.'3
These quotations show us the term ' convention ' in estab-
lished use. It crept in during the reign of James V. ; but a
detailed study of the facts would be too laborious for the present
purpose. Not the least unfortunate result of the resignation
of Thomas Thomson was that his collection of extracts from
the MS. Acta Dominorum Concilii relating to public affairs,
intended to form an introductory volume to the Register of the
Privy Council — a register which assumed independent existence
in 1545 — came to be overlooked, and remains to this day the
most important unpublished material relating to the period.
Brewer's calendar of the Henry VIII. papers and his historical
introduction suffered in consequence : the foundation of the
College of Justice in 1532 has not been connected with
the judicial development which led up to it : many im-
portant facts relating to Parliament and Council have escaped
notice : the whole history of James V.'s reign stands in need
of revision.
We find ' convention ' in 1522 and 1523 applied to gatherings
which had a military design.4 Within a very few years ' general
convention ' or ' convention ' had almost ousted ' general
council ' in common usage. Special investigation, which might
be suitable for a research student, would illustrate in detail how
' convention ' was treated : how the ' letters ' were issued by
the Secretary under the signet : how short, sometimes, the notice
was : how considerable, on occasion, the attendance — as in
1531, when fifty-five members sat : 5 how this form of meeting
appears at once in the Register of the Privy Council, where the
lords responding to summons are enumerated after the Privy
Councillors under such headings as ratione conventions or extra-
ordinarii ratione conventus. The continuity of * general council '
and ' convention ' is obvious.
1 A.P, ii. 252, c. 30. *Uid. 543. *lb\d. iii. 42.
*Tr. Ace. v. 208,212, 225. 5^.Z).C. Jan. 26, 1531.
c Parliament ' and c General Council ' 169
It may be useful to quote a mutilated specimen of the * letters '
issued in summons, extant among the Supplementary Parlia-
mentary Papers ; x probably one prepared by the Regent Arran's
Secretary and not sent out. Addressing his * richt traist cousing,'
the Regent expresses fear of English invasion. ' It is thocht
expedient be us and the lordis being here present with us that
ane conventioun be h ... and barronis of this realme and uthiris
quhais counsale ar to be had in this behalff . . . prayis you rycht
effectuislie as ye luif the wele and prosperitie of this realme . . .
you to be in this toun of Edinburgh the last day of this instant
moneth of Januar . . . counsale to be had in all thir materis and
uthiris as salbe schewin to you at ... failze nocht heirintill as ye
luif the auld honour and fame that our foirbeiris . . . for the
debait of this realme and liberte of the samin.' The letter is
dated January 9, 1 54-.
Lastly, it may be well to refer to the famous act of 1587 anent
commissioners of the sheriffdoms,2 lest any too trustful historian
be deceived by the astounding statement in the General Index,
s.v. ' Convention of Estates ' : * The commissioners of shires
to be summoned to general conventions by precepts of chancery
like the other Estates.' What the act intends to say is perfectly
consistent with the general results of the present inquiry. When
there is to be ' parliament ' summons is by * precepts furth of the
chancellarie ' : when ' generall conventioun,' by * his hienes
missive lettres or chargeis.' One clause is peculiarly apposite
to the point discussed, because it indicates the practical con-
siderations which made * general council ' or ' convention ' a
useful instrument pro re nata, an elastic assembly which could
be rapidly summoned and which, though not fully representative,
might be held to reflect the views of the estates : 4 And that his
Maiesties missives befoir generall counsellis salbe directit to
the saidis commissioners or certane of the maist ewest of
thame as to the commissioners of burrowis in tyme cuming.'
Proceedings at the Convention of 1585, when the league with
Elizabeth was sanctioned, illustrate the advantages of an assembly
called on shorter notice than * parliament,' and also the growth
of a feeling that it had become insufficiently representative to
commit the estates. The matter ' may na langer be protractit
nor without perrel differrit to a mair solemne conventioun of
the haill estaittis in parliament ' : authority to conclude is
granted ' for ws and in name and behalff of the haill esteatis
1I. No. 12. 2 A. P. iii. 509-10.
170 f Parliament ' and £ General Council '
of this realme quhais body in this conventioun we represent ' ;
but it is recognised that subsequent confirmation in Parliament
will be necessary.1 In 1583, again, James VI. desired a taxation,
and ' convenit a gude nowmer of his estaittis.' So large a sum,
they considered, required ' the presence of a greittar nowmer.'
There was no doubt, of course, that * convention ' had com-
petence ; but final resolution was postponed till ' the assembly
of his hienes estaittis in his nixt parliament ... or to a new
conventioun of the estattis in greittar nowmer nor is presentlie
assembled.' 2 If James I. sought to fuse ' parliament ' and
' general council,' he failed. It is very remarkable that under
James VI., when his predecessor's Act of General Council for
the representation of shires was being carried into effect, we
should find this evident sense of dissatisfaction with * conven-
tion ' as it stood, and a gradual approach — or, according to the
view here adopted, a return — to the full publicity of a general
assembly of the estates.
Clearly * general council ' or ' convention * is a salient and
distinctive feature in the constitution of Scotland. The con-
ventions of the seventeenth century will doubtless become more
intelligible when we understand the long tradition upon which
they were founded.
R. K. HANNAY.
* A. P. 423.
M. 328.
The Stuart Papers at Windsor Castle
r I ''HE Royal Library at Windsor contains the immense mass
JL of letters and papers known as the Stuart Papers which
formerly belonged to the last members of the direct Stuart line,
James VIII. and his two sons, Charles III. and Henry IX. The
papers were brought to England from Italy at dates between
1810 and 1817. The document which is here published for
the first time is of interest, because it appears to be the earliest
hitherto-discovered description of one important section of the
Stuart Papers.
It seems scarcely necessary to go over the somewhat chequered
history of the Stuart Papers, which have been subject to almost
as much maltreatment and as many vicissitudes as the unfor-
tunate Family, whose tragedy they unfold. For is it not written
in the Chronicles of the Historical Manuscripts Commission,
the six bulky volumes already published which bring the Calendar
down to about March 1718 ? The wonderful thing is that the
papers have survived at all. In order, however, that the docu-
ment now printed may be intelligible, it is necessary to recapitu-
late some of the main facts.
It has long been known that the Stuart Papers came from
two different sources and were acquired by the Crown on two
distinct occasions. The first consignment of papers was
obtained from the Abbe* Waters, Procureur-General of the
English Benedictines at Rome, as the result of negotiations
begun in 1 804 and concluded in 1 805 by Sir John Coxe Hippisley
and, after lying for several years at Civita Vecchia awaiting
transport to England, were finally brought to London via Tunis
in 1810. This consignment represented, as far as can now be
discovered, the whole or part of the papers which passed at the
death of Charles III. to his daughter, the Duchess of Albany,
and at her death to Abbe Waters under conditions to be dis-
cussed later.
The second consignment, which contained the papers belong-
ing to the Cardinal York and which he had for the most part
172 Walter Seton
obtained from his father James VIII. and the main line of the
Family, passed on the death of the Cardinal to the Bishop of
Milevi, Mgr. Cesarini. Their value was quite unknown and
unappreciated and after they had lain in a garret in Rome for
some time, they were bought for a few pounds by a Scot of very
doubtful reputation, Dr. Robert Watson, who was ultimately
compelled to hand them over to the British Government. They
reached England in 1817. The full story, one of the most
romantic in the whole history of Manuscripts, will be found in
Vol. I. Stuart Papers, Hist. MSS. Comm. pp. ix.-xiv.
The two collections are now housed together at Windsor and
it is difficult, if not impossible, to decide with accuracy which
documents belonged to which collection. This is due to the
fact that the Commission appointed in 1 8 1 9 to examine and report
upon the Papers resolved that the first step was to arrange them
all in chronological order. Some of the documents in the first
collection can be identified by reason of their having endorse-
ments by Abbe Waters.
The following is the new document, which throws some light
upon the early history of the first collection.
DOCUMENT
THE Abbe J. Wfaters] a Native of I[taly] educated at Douay
& Monk of the Benedictine Order about 17 years ago
at Paris became made known to the Natural Daughter of the late
Pretender known by the name of Miss S[tuart] who lived in that
Metropolis with her Mother.
In 1777 Mr W[aters] was appointed Agent-general to all the
English Benedictine Convents, in which capacity he has resided
at R[ome] ever since.
In the year 1785 two or 3 years before he died the late C[ount]
of AQbany] acknowledgd and publickly ownd Miss Sftuart],1
brought her to Florence & distinguishd her with the T[itle] of
D[uchess] of Albany. She liv'd with her Father till his Decease.
Soon after her Arrival in Italy she sent for Mr W[aters] &
treated him uniformly] with many marks of confidence [and] of
esteem till her death which happen'd in November. 1789. In
her Will she appointed Mr Wfaters] her Executor & assign'd
to him all her books & papers. These Mr W[aters] brought
from Florence to Rome & deposited in the apartment of the
1 * as his daughter ' erased.
The Stuart Papers at Windsor Castle 173
Palace of the C[ancellaria] (which as V[ice] Chancellor of the
apostolic See belongs to the Cardinal of York) which had been
hers but has ever since been considered that of Mr W[aters].
Having occupied some of my leisure at R[ome] in searching
public Libraries for papers relating to the History of my own
country — his R[oyal] H[ighness] P[rince] A[ugustus] in De-
cember last condescend [ed] to inform me that he had heard of
Mr W[aters] being in possession of some papers relating to the
S[tuart] Family & signified his pleasure that I should make his
acquaintance & use my endeavor so far as to investigate the real
state of them. In the course of a few weeks I succeeded so far
6 obtained a view of them.1
The collection is contained & entirely fills 2 Presses of almost
7 feet high & between 5 & 6 wide & 1 8 inches deep each — the
transient view I was allow'd to take prevents my giving the full
& satisfactory account of them I could wish. The principal were
as follows.
There are four volumes in quarto of upwards of a I ooo pages
each containing a History of the Affairs of England from the
Death of Charles ist to the year 1701. It is written in English
— with much apparent accuracy & with marginal references to
Letters & Documents from whence compil'd. The originals
were probably destroy'd when the History was finish'd, as I saw
no letters previous to the present century.
Six Volumes in small Folio & a 7th begun of Letters, Warrants,
public Papers etc from the year 1701 to the year 1774.
Two odd volumes by a Mr MacEgan of a Journal kept by
him during his attendance on the Pretender.
The other Volumes were sent a few years ago to Monsr Guyot
of Paris who was composing a History of the Times of which
they treated & were never returned.
A Journal of the years 1745 & 46 written in French of
sufficient length to form a moderately sizd Quarto volume.
Account Books of all the Receipts & Expenditures of the
Family kept with great exactness & several other M.S. volumes
bound up, which must be left for future examination.
A collection of Keys for decyphering private correspondence
with lists of the feigned names assumed by the correspondents
& of such persons as they had occasion to mention.
The letters are chiefly from the beginning of this century to
the death of the Count of Albany & contain not only such as
1 ' the vast & valuable collection ' deleted.
M
i/4 Walter Seton
were receiv'd by the Stuarts during that period, but the answers
to them : for Mr W[aters] informs me that it [had] ever been
the custom of the Family never to write a letter or billet even in
the most trifling occasion without keeping a copy of it. It may
be observed that Mr Waters inform'd me that after the decease
of the Duchess, he burnt all those that were of a trifling
nature.
The different correspondences were in general tied or seal'd
up in different bundles — I took down one which contained letters
from the Bishop of Rochester & the Duke of Wharton to the
Pretender in the year 1727, written under feign'd names & partly
in figures which were explain'd in interlineations. It is probable
that this collection contains all the letters & other papers to and
from the friends and adherents of the Stuart Cause during the
present century, the immense bulk of which may be conceiv'd
from the dimensions of the Presses above given which are stufFd
entirely full.
During my intercourse with Mr W[aters] I ask'd him what
was his intention as to the use or disposal of them. He replied
that at the death of the Cfardinal] of Y[ork] he had thoughts of
turning them to some account & should probably sell them.
I then ask'd him whether any consideration would induce him
[to] part with them before that event. He said none — I then
added that I was authoris'd by P[rince] A[ugustus] to treat with
him for them & would enter into a negociation immediately.
He answered : that whatever might be his inclination, his situa-
tion with the C[ardinal] render'd it impossible. For tho' by the
will of the Duchess they were his own property & tho' the
Cfardinal], whose inactivity of temper prevented him from inter-
esting himself in any thing of the kind1 & who when Mr Wfaters]
has mentioned them to him has repeatedly said " you have them,
do what you will with them." — yet if any negociation was to
transpire particularly with the parties in question, such is his
influence that Mr Wfaters] would run the risque of being
arrested 2 — & he would give orders for all the papers to be
burnt. Nothing of the kind would be carried on without his
knowledge, for he is surrounded by people who have this end in
availing themselves of the weakness of his disposition & who
amuse him with the most trifling details, so that all his dependents
are oblig'd to act with the utmost circumspection.
1 'and who in fact knows or cares very little about them ' deleted.
2 'and imprison'd perhaps for life' deleted.
The Stuart Papers at Windsor Castle 175
The result of our conference was this — that upon condition
that the business should not be known to a 4th person he would
solemnly pledge himself never to dispose of them to any one but
to Pfrince] A[ugustus] or the R[oyal] F[amily] of England
without their consent.
That I might give his R[oyal] H[ighness] some general idea
of them, he introduced me to a sight of them — saying that I was
the first to whom he had ever shown them & that the only M.S.
that had been seen was the Journal of 1745 above mention'd
which he lent to Sir J[ ] M[ ] last year under a
promise of secrecy & who imparted it in confidence to his R[oyal]
Highness].1
As Mr Wfaters] does not occupy his apartment in the C[ancel-
laria], but resides in a house at some distance belonging to him
as Agent, he means to remove 2 the most important MSS from
time to time to his own dwelling. Accordingly] he now sets
apart two days in the week to make selections.3 He has already
remov'd all the books above recited, the keys to the cyphers &
many of the Letters & especially those written by the Pretender
relative to the Rebellion in 1 745.
He promis'd to give me a general list of the most material,
but he puts me off as often as I see him, & I believe in reality
is fearful lest any written paper that relates to the collection
should go out of his hands.4
Mr W[aters] is turn'd of 40 & is respected as a man of
integrity — the Cfardinal] is near 70 & not of a strong constitu-
tion so that there is little doubt but that the Royal Family will
be in possession of this valuable collection in the course of a few
years.
I endeavour'd to find out what kind of recompence Mr W[aters]
was most inclin'd to. I am not authoris'd to decide, but I believe
a Pension would be most desireable, nor do I think he is un-
reasonable in his expectations.
There are also in his apartment in the Cfancellaria] about 40
Miniature Portraits of the Stuart Family beginning with Mary
Queen of Scots. These are the property of the Cardinal.
The Highland Dress worn by the Pretender in the year
1745-
1 ' from whence the knowledge of the whole arose ' deleted.
2 * I advis'd him to remove ' in first draft.
3 ' & loads his servant & himself home in the evening ' deleted.
4 'and it is only in failure of which that I attempt this imperfect sketch' deleted.
176 Walter Seton
The Jewels of the S[tuart] Family & many that were carried
for [sic] Efngland] by James 2nd were for some time in pos-
session of Mr Wfaters] after the death of the D[uchess] of
Aflbany] & who if requir'd would furnish a Catalogue of them
& at how much they were estimated.
In a subsequent interview with Mr W[aters] he assur'd me
that tho' no inducement should tempt him to depart from his
engagement with P[rince] A[ugustus], yet he should feel himself
more bound to his R[oyal] H[ighness], if1 he would condescend
to solicit the P[ope] for some Benefice or Pension for him, his
income having suffer'd so materially from the Revolution in
France.
This being reported, his R[oyal] H[ighness] graciously under-
took the solicitation & in his last interview he obtained a promise
from His Holiness, that Mr W[aters] should be provided for.
It will be observed that the document is unsigned. It was
bought some years ago among a number of other papers con-
nected with Sir William Hamilton, the distinguished sailor who
is perhaps best known as the husband of Lady Hamilton, the
friend of Nelson. It now belongs to the present writer. The
handwriting has been examined and is clearly that of Sir William
Hamilton. The document is a draft, not a fair copy, and at
present it is not known whether the fair copy still exists or even
to whom it was sent. It was probably a confidential report
made by Hamilton either to some Minister of the Crown or
possibly to some member of the Royal Family. This may be
inferred from the sentence 2 that the understanding with Waters
was not to be known to a fourth person. Presumably Waters
himself, Hamilton and the recipient of the report were the three
persons who were to be in the secret. The reference to Prince
Augustus in the following sentence makes it clear that the third
person was not the Prince himself.
The date of the document is almost certainly 1 793. Hamilton
is known to have been in Rome in 1792, 1793. Moreover, this
can be inferred from the statement that ' the Cardinal is near
seventy ' — he was seventy in 1795.
The Stuart Papers are not at present open for inspection in
the ordinary way, as they are being arranged and bound : and
until that process is complete, examination of them is difficult.
Moreover, a considerable portion of them is away from Windsor
14 before he left Rome' deleted. ' P. 175.
The Stuart Papers at Windsor Castle 177
in the Public Record Office, undergoing further examination.
His Majesty the King was however graciously pleased to grant
permission for the Papers to be seen, for the purpose of ascer-
taining some points arising from the Hamilton document.1
Assuming that this is the earliest statement of the contents of
the Waters collection, it is obviously of interest to see how
Hamilton's list compares with other records of the collection.
There have hitherto been two lists. One was that of Waters
himself and was stated to be in a certain green portfolio which
accompanied the collection and which was apparently extant in
1902, when the Historical Manuscripts Commission published
their first volume.2 It was not available for this investigation
and is probably at the Record Office. The other list was that
made by the Rev. Stanier Clarke, Librarian to the Prince Regent,
when he handed over the Stuart Papers to the Commissioners
in 1819. This second list is a rather slipshod and certainly
incomplete one and not much reliance can be placed on it.
Further, it must be remembered that Hamilton's list merely
represents the results of a ' transient view ' of the collection, not
a systematic examination by a trained historian.
It has, however, been possible to identify some at any rate of
the items seen by Hamilton with documents now at Windsor
and thus to establish the provenance of those documents as
coming originally from the Waters collection.
I. * Four volumes in quarto of upwards of a 1000 pages each
containing a History of the Affairs of England from the Death of
Charles ist to the year 1701. // is written in English — with much
apparent accuracy and with marginal references to Letters and
Documents from whence compiled'
This is evidently the set of four volumes quarto of * The Life
of James II. King of England, etc., collected out of Memoirs writ
with his own hand,' covering the years 1641-1701.
Vol. I. contains 1091 pp.: II., 893; III., 740; IV., 978.
The period down to the death of Charles I. is in Vol. I., pp. 1-138.
This work was published by the Rev. Stanier Clarke in two
volumes in 1816.
II. * Six volumes in small Folio and a seventh begun of Letters,
Warrants, public Papers, etc., from the year 1701 to the year
1774-'
JThe actual investigation was made by Mr. H. H. Bellot for the present
writer.
*H.M.C. vol. i. p. vi.
178 Walter Seton
This is probably either (i) * Five volumes of Entry Books,'
numbered 3 in Clarke's list1 or ' Register of Letters from 1769 to
1774 and copies and minutes of commissions, warrants, etc.,
1719-1773,' numbered 10 in Clarke's list. These are not at
present at Windsor and are presumably at the Record Office.
III. * Two odd volumes by a Mr. MacEgan of a Journal kept
by him during his attendance on the Pretender.'
In Clarke's list item 4 is a " Historia della Reale Casa Stuarda
composta da Giovanni MacEgan di Kilbaran." This is almost
certainly part of the Histoire de Flrlande published in
1758 by the Abbe James MacGeoghegan, one of the members
of the Irish Royalist sept of MacGeoghegan which hailed from
Castletown-Geoghegan, near Kilbeggan. The last section of
the book is described as the History of the Four Stuart Kings
and goes down to 1699. But the document seen by Hamilton
cannot be the same. The Abbe James MacGeoghegan does
not appear to have been in attendance on the Prince. It may
have been the work of another member of the family, Alexander
who was with the Prince in Scotland in 1745-46 and later
saw service with the French in India : or it may have been
his brother Sir Francis who was in Lally's regiment and fell
at the battle of Laffelde' 1747. For this suggested identification
of ' MacEgan ' with one of the MacGeoghegans, the present
writer is indebted to Dr. Walter Blaikie.
IV. ' The other volumes were sent a few years ago to Monsr. Guyot
of Paris who was composing a History of the Times of which they
treated and were never returned. ,'
The reprehensible borrower was probably G. G. Guyot who
published an Histoire d'Angleterre in 1784, and an Histoire de
France^ in 1787-95.
V. * A Journal of the years 1 745 and 46 written in French of
sufficient length to form a moderately sized Quarto volume,
There is a document entitled * Memoires pour servir a 1'histoire
du Prince Charles Edouard Stuard 1745 et 1746' 359 pp.,
which would make a thin quarto if bound up : at present it is
in sections tied with pink ribbon.
VI. * Account Books of all the Receipts and Expenditures of the
Family, etc.*
There are at Windsor a large number of Account Books.
VII. ' A collection of keys for decyphering private correspondence'
These have mostly been published by the Historical Manu-
1H.M.C. i. vi.
The Stuart Papers at Windsor Castle 179
scripts Commission. They are presumably at the Record Office
now.
VIII. ' / took down one [bundle of correspondence] which
contained letters from the Bishop of Rochester and the Duke of Wharton
to the Pretender — in the year 1727.'
All the separate letters received — and they are said to number
over 60,000 — have by now been arranged in chronological order
and the bundles covering 1727 have been already bound up.
The volumes for 1727 do contain letters from the Bishop of
Rochester and the Duke of Wharton.
From this it will be seen that Sir William Hamilton was very
accurate in his observations and that a good deal of what he saw
can still be identified.
The main interest of the document is to show that the negotia-
tions for the Waters collection did not begin with Sir John
Hippisley in 1804, as apparently believed by Mr. F. H. Black-
burne Daniell, the Editor of the H.M.C. Calendar (1902), but
at least ten years earlier. In fact, it would appear from the
Hamilton document that there was already in 1793 some under-
standing with Mr. Waters as to the destination of the papers.
Abbe Waters was not very straightforward with Sir William
Hamilton as to his rights in the Stuart Papers. It is quite true
that he was executor to the Duchess of Albany : but the will of
the Duchess, which has been found and published by the Scottish
History Society, provides as follows :
' She further charges the said Abbati Waters to collect all
the letters belonging to the royal house and family and to deliver
them to her royal uncle. All her purely personal letters to be
assigned to the flames by the hand of the said Abbati.' (Trans-
lated from original Italian.)
Evidently Abbe Waters carried out the second clause by
burning * all those that were of a trifling character.' But he
does not seem to have handed over the family archives to the
Cardinal York, perhaps because the Cardinal had enough of his
>wn,1 and was not sufficiently interested. It looks as if the
)ound volumes, cyphers and letters selected by Waters and
taken by him from the Cancellaria to his private dwelling made
ip the bulk of the first collection. The residue probably
became merged in the Cardinal's papers and formed part of the
~"^atson collection. If this explanation is correct, it would
iccount for the presence in the Watson collection of a good many
1 The collection subsequently bought by Watson.
180 The Stuart Papers at Windsor Castle
papers with endorsements in Waters' handwriting, showing
that they passed through his hands.
Nothing definite is known as to the collection of forty Stuart
miniatures which were in Waters' apartment in the Cancellaria
or the Highland Dress mentioned in the document. They
probably remained there and were scattered, like so much else
of the Cardinal Duke's possessions in Rome during the troublous
years which followed.
Thanks are due to the Hon. John Fortescue, Librarian of
Windsor Castle, with whose courteous co-operation the investi-
gation was made.
WALTER SETON.
Scottish Biblical Inscriptions in France
AT the chateau of Chenonceaux, in the department of Indre-et-
Loire, there exist some interesting records of a Scot, or
Scots, in France in the first half of the sixteenth century, in the
form of some texts from the New Testament which are incised
on the inner walls of the chapel ; the chapel itself is a fine piece
of early 1 6th-century work. These inscriptions have been brought
to my notice by M. Henri Berthon, Taylorian Lecturer in
French in the University of Oxford, and to his kindness, and
that of Mme. Mainguy at Chenonceaux, I am indebted for the
following copies of them, and for verification of doubtful points.
As will be seen from the references which I have added, three of
the texts are from the Epistle to the Romans, and one from the
Epistle of St. James, while the dates range from 1543 to 1548.
The lettering is partly roman capitals and partly black letter or
roman minuscules ; the variations of these are here reproduced
as far as could readily be done.
i. In the middle of the left-hand wall of the chapel :
ilte Retoaitb ot fgn is fotb
THE GRACE FORSVyCHT OF
IS PAyS AN& lyiF IN IESV
CHRST OVR lORD 1543
(Rom. vi. 23.)
2. Almost opposite this, on a pilaster of the right-hand wall :
SNfERVORE
THE = IR=OF=MAN
VIRKIS NOT=TH
E = 1VST1CE = OF
cob
(James i. 20.)
Below this occurs : 1543 JESUS
1 82 Scottish Biblical Inscriptions in France
3. On the right-hand wall, behind the door :
be not = onrrnm = togcht = t nil 1 546
(Rom. xii. 21.)
4. On the left-hand wall, behind the door :
AN&RVORE
AN& 3E lEgf EfTER
THE FlECHE 3E S
A\ fcEg 1548
(Rom. viii. 13.)
There was, of course, no Scottish version of the New Testa-
ment in general use, and the wording of the texts does not
correspond with Nisbet's adaptation of the Wycliffite version, nor
as a whole with any Scottish renderings in religious works of the
period. The wording of Rom. viii. 13 is indeed identical with
that in Archbishop Hamilton's Catechism (p. 117) : 'And ye lief
efter the fleisch ye sail dee,' but this correspondence may very
well be accidental. The probability is that each text was inde-
pendently translated from French or Latin, and in the rendering
of Rom. vi. 23, the translator evidently trusted to memory, and
so substituted * pays and lyif ' for ' everlasting life.' (In the same
verse ' forsvycht ' is equivalent to ' forsuyth ' = forsooth, as in No.
3 4vycht' is = with.)
There remains one unsolved puzzle in three of the four in-
scriptions, namely the meaning of the introductory letters,
anfervore. It seems most natural to take these as representing
the Latin words an feruore, and to suppose that they are either
the beginning of a familiar verse or sentence in one of the services
of the church, or form part or whole of a family or personal
motto. In the latter case they might serve to identify the
unknown author or authors of these inscriptions, of which local
tradition knows no more than that their existence is due to the
presence of Scottish guards at the chateau, but in what connexion
is apparently unknown. Perhaps someone who has made a
special study of the Scots in France may be able to follow up
the clue.
Oxford. W. A. CRAIGIE.
Ninian Campbell, Professor of Eloquence at
Saumur, Minister of Kilmacolm and of
Rosneath
FOR many centuries there were intimate relations between
Scotland and France. Scottish merchants traded with
France ; French merchants traded with Scotland ; there was
constant intercourse between the people and more particularly
between the Courts of the two kingdoms. Scottish scholars
flocked to France in large numbers, where they were courteously
received. This did not cease with the Reformation. Many
Scotsmen who adhered to the old faith sought refuge in France,
while scholars of the Reformed party were gladly welcomed by
the French Protestants and found employment amongst them.
Many young Scotsmen of good family likewise visited France
with their tutors or governors, and studied at one or other of the
great schools of learning.
Philippe de Mornay, seigneur du Plessis-Mornay, 1549-1623,
the great champion of the Protestant cause in France, was
appointed governor in Saumur in 1589 by Henry IV. Saumur
is an old town on an island in the Loire, formerly in the province
of Anjou, now in the department of Marne et Loire, with several
interesting churches, an old castle of the thirteenth century, and
a fine town-house. At one time it belonged to the dukes of
Anjou, but in the thirteenth century it fell into the hands of the
Kings of France, to whom it remained faithful.
De Mornay, it is now generally believed, was the author of the
celebrated treatise Vindidae contra tyrannos, published under the
pseudonym of Stephanus Junius Brutus, bearing to be printed
at Edinburgh in 8vo in I579,1 but probably at Basle, formerly
1 The Cambridge Modern History, iii. pp. 760, 761, 764. Also ascribed to
Hubert Languet, Hallam, Literature of Europe ', ii. p. 132, ed. 1872. Brunet,
Manuel du Libraire, i. 1907, s.v. Brutus (Stephanus Junius). The book bears the
false imprint, Edimburgi Anno 1579. It was probably printed at Basle. It was
translated into English by N. Y., 1646, and again 1648, the latter said to be by
Walker, the executioner of Charles I.
184 David Murray
attributed to Hubert Languet ; reprinted at Frankfort in 1608,
and translated into English in 1689.
At Saumur de Mornay established a Protestant University
which soon attained great celebrity by the eminence of its pro-
fessors and the brilliancy of its students. The school of Saumur
represented the more moderate side of French Protestantism, as
opposed to that of Sedan. ' In contemplating the history of these
seminaries,' says David Irving, ' it is impossible for us to suppress
a feeling of deep regret at the common ruin which afterwards
overwhelmed them, in consequence of the faithless and unre-
lenting conduct of a cold-blooded tyrant.' 1
Six Scotsmen, all, with two exceptions, connected with Glasgow,
were professors at Saumur in the early part of the seventeenth
century. These were Robert Boyd of Trochrig, afterwards
Principal of the University of Glasgow ; Zachary Boyd, his
cousin, the well-known minister of the Barony Church of Glasgow ;
John Cameron, the famous theologian, a native of Glasgow,
afterwards Principal of the University ; Mark Duncan, M.D.,
a native of Roxburghshire ; Robert Monteith of Salmonet, a
native of Edinburgh ; and Ninian Campbell, the subject of
this paper.
Robert Boyd of Trochrig, 1578-1627, was the eldest son of
James Boyd of Trochrig, archbishop of Glasgow, and was born
in Glasgow in 1578 — * Glascua me genuit.' Trochrig is now in
the parish of Girvan, but prior to 1653 formed part of the
extensive parish of Kirkoswald of which James Boyd was minister,
while holding the see of Glasgow. Robert Boyd was educated
at the newly established University of Edinburgh, and then
proceeded to France. After teaching Philosophy at Montauban
for five years, 1599-1603, he was called to the pastorate of the
church at Vertreuil in the old province of Guyenne, now in the
department of Gironde. In 1606 he was appointed a regent or
professor of philosophy at Saumur. He mentions the removal
of his library to that town and that he spent a considerable sum
in augmenting it after he had settled there. He was subse-
quently called to the Chair of Divinity, and along with this he
discharged the office of a pastor in the town. His preaching in
French, it is said, was greatly admired by the people. He only
held the Chair of Divinity, however, for a year, as in 1 6 1 5 he was
summoned by King James VI. to be Principal of the University
of Glasgow. Besides performing the duties of this office he was
1 Irving, Lives ofScotish Writers, i. p. 297, Edinburgh 1839, 8vo.
Ninian Campbell of Kilmacolm 185
professor of divinity, taught Hebrew and Syriac, and had the
pastoral charge of the parish of Govan. His opinions upon
church government did not accord with those of the king and
the church party, and he resigned the principalship in 1621,
retired to Trochrig and died at Edinburgh in I627.1
John Livingston speaks of him as a man of a sour-like disposi-
tion and carriage, but always kind and familiar. He would call
some of the students to him, place books before them and have
them ' sing tunes of music, wherein he took great delight.' 2
Robert Blair calls him ' a learned and holy man,' and mentions
that he was present at his inaugural oration as Principal, which
very much cheered him. Some one put the question to him
* that seeing he was a gentleman of considerable estate whereupon
he might live competently enough, what caused him to embrace
so painful a calling, as both to profess divinity in the schools,
and teach people also by his ministry ? His answer was that
considering the great wrath under which he lay naturally, and
the great salvation purchased to him by Jesus Christ he had
resolved to spend himself to the utmost, giving all diligence to
glorify that Lord who had so loved him.' Blair felt that this
was a man of God, one in a thousand.3
His portrait hangs in the Senate room of the University.
Zachary Boyd, 1585-1653, studied at the Universities of
Glasgow and St. Andrews, at the latter of which he graduated
M.A. in 1607. Thereafter he proceeded to Saumur where he
was appointed one of the Regents in 1612. In 1615 he was
offered the principalship of the University, but did not see his
way to accept it. In 1617 he was presented to the Church of
Notre Dame, in Saumur, associated with the memory of Louis XL,
but the position of Protestants in France became so uncomfort-
able that he resigned his charge and returned to Scotland, and
was in 1623 admitted minister of the Barony parish of Glasgow.
John Cameron, 1579-1625, was born in Glasgow, studied at
the University and afterwards taught Greek. In 1600 he
removed to France, and after some time passed at Bordeaux he
was appointed to teach the classical languages in the newly
established College of Bergerat and shortly afterwards he became
Professor of Divinity at Sedan. He again returned to Bordeaux,
1 Wodrow gives a long account of Robert Boyd, Lives of the Reformers and most
eminent ministers of the Church of Scotland, ii. part ii. p. I sqq. (Maitland Club).
2 Brief 'historical relation of the life of Mr. John Livingston, p. 6, 1737, 4to.
3 Memoirs of the life of Mr. Robert Blair, p. 1 1, Edinburgh 1764, 8vo.
1 86 David Murray
and from there visited Paris, Geneva and Heidelberg to pursue
his studies. When Franz Gomar, 1563-1641, was called from
Saumur to Groningen in 1618, Cameron was appointed to the
chair of divinity at Saumur. His lectures attracted large
audiences and were often attended by de Mornay. In 1620 the
students were almost all dispersed by the political troubles in
France and Cameron accepted the principalship of the University
of Glasgow. In 1623 he resigned and returned to Saumur, but
was not allowed to teach, and in 1624 he was appointed to the
chair of Divinity at Montauban, where he died the next year.1
Mark Duncan (? 1570-1640) was born at Maxpofle in Rox-
burghshire. He went to the continent in early life and obtained
the degree of M.D., but at what University is not known. He
obtained an appointment as Regent or Professor of Philosophy
at Saumur and acquired great celebrity as a teacher. He
published a well-known treatise on Logic2 which passed through
several editions, and is highly commended by Sir William
Hamilton.3 He also practised medicine and obtained great
popularity as a physician. He became Principal of the Univer-
sity, retaining at the same time his professorship of philosophy.
Among his pupils was Jean Daille, one of the most distinguished
theologians of the seventeenth century, author of a once cele-
brated book on the right use of the Fathers.4
Duncan's elder brother, William, Dempster assures us,
excelled in the liberal arts and especially in Greek, and dis-
tinguished himself as Professor of Philosophy and Physic in the
schools of Toulouse and Montauban. Mark's son, also named
Mark, but better known under the name M. de Cerisantes, was
a kind of Admirable Crichton, whose life was more romantic
than a romance. He obtained high celebrity as a Latin poet
and approached more nearly to Catullus than any other modern
has done.5
JAs to Cameron, see Wodrow, Op. laud. vol. ii. part i. p. 8 1 sqq. Irving,
Lives ofScotish Writers, i. p. 333.
2 Institutions Logicae, Salmurii 1612, izmo, Paris 1613, 8vo, and many other
editions.
Burgersdyk was a colleague of Duncan at Saumur, and his well-known treatise
on logic is largely founded on Duncan's work.
3 Discussions, pp. 121, 122. London 1853, 8vo.
4 Traicte de r employ dessaincts peres pour lejugement des differ ends qui sont aujourd'huy
en la religion. Geneva 1632, 8vo. In English, London 1651, 410; in Latin,
Genera 1655, 410.
5 As to Duncan, see Irving, Lives of Scotish Writers, vol. 301.
Ninian Campbell of Kilmacolm 187
Robert Menteith of Salmonet was the third and youngest son
of Alexander Menteith, a burgess of Edinburgh, lie was
educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated
M.A. in 1621. Shortly afterwards he removed to Saumur,
where he was appointed Professor of Philosophy. I have the
MS. of his lectures on Philosophy for the session 1625-26. He
seems to have returned to Scotland about this time, * with an
great show of learning.' In 1629 he was a candidate for the
Chair of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh, but was not
elected. Next year he was presented to the parish of Dudding-
ston and admitted, but having engaged in improper intimacy
with a lady of rank he had to leave the country. He then went
to Paris, where he joined the Roman Catholic church, obtained
the patronage of Cardinal Richelieu, and was made a canon of
Notre Dame de Paris by Cardinal de Retz. Michel de Marolles,
who met him at court in 1641, refers to his gentle and agreeable
personality and witty conversation, and adds that ' never was
there a man more wise, or more disinterested, or more respected
by the legitimate authorities.' He expresses an equally high
opinion of his learning and intellectual accomplishments, and
makes special mention of the elegant French style of his writings.
The date of his death is uncertain, but it was prior to I3th
September, I66O.1 He is still remembered by his Histoire des
Troubles de la Grande Brefagne, 1633-1646, published at Paris
in 1661, and translated into English by James Ogilvie in 1675.*
Gabriel Ferguson, a contemporary Scotsman at Saumur,
treats of the learned men of Scotland.3
Ninian Campbell was born in or about the year 1 599. He was
a native of Cowal, and apparently well-born, as when speaking of
1See Riddell, The Keir Performance, p. 250. Edinburgh 1860, 410.
2 Our old friend Monteith of Salmonet did not fail to dedicate the territorial
title he had so ingeniously achieved to the glory of his country. The title-page
of his book is indeed a very fair display of the spirit which actuated his literary
countrymen. He is on the same cavalier side of the great question Clarendon
held, but that does not hinder him from bringing the English historian to task for
injustice to the weight and merits of Scotland thus : ' The History of the Troubles
of Great Britain, containing a particular account of the most remarkable passages
in Scotland, from the year 1633 to 1650, with an exact relation of the wars
carried on, and the battles fought, by the Marquis of Montrose (all which are
omitted in the Earl of Clarendon's History), also a full account of all the trans-
actions in England during that time, written in French by Robert Monteith of
Salmonet.' Burton, The Scot Abroad, ii. p. 37.
3 Theses theologicae In Academia Salmuriensi pars prior, p. 135. Salmurii 1631, 410.
1 88 David Murray
himself he says, ' Neverthelesse, honourable birth and education,
the patterne of worthy acts, and the immortall memorie of renowned
ancestors, either in church or policy, communicated to the emulous
posteritie for imitation is not the least portion of inheritance.'
His father it would appear was still living shortly before 1635.
In 1615 he entered the University of Glasgow, and in 1619
took the degree of M.A. He probably went abroad shortly
after his graduation. Impelled by a thirst for arts and science
and attracted by the reputation of Saumur for learning and the
practice of virtue and piety, and probably on the recommenda-
tion of Robert Boyd, he found his way thither in 1625. Shortly
after his arrival he was appointed Professor of Eloquence, a chair
which then existed in most French Universities.
In 1628 he published Apologia | Criticae. | In qua brevitur
huius facultatis vtilitatis osten- | duntur, quaeque contra earn
objici | solent, diluuntur Auctore Niniano Campbello Scoto \
Cowaliensi) Eloquentiae in Academia Salmuriensi \ Professore. \
[Woodcut with motto Vincit Amor Patriae ] [ SAIMVRII \
Ex Typographia Ludovici Gyyoni M.DC. xxviii. | 4to. 24 pp.
A. i-F. 2 in twos.1
It is dedicated to Mark Duncan, Gymnasiarch or Principal
of the University (Academia} of Saumur. He refers to Trochrig
and Cameron as masters of Theology, and Duncan as completing
a triumvirate. He mentions that in a recent illness he had been
attended by Duncan with unremitting care and skill. He
speaks of Episcopus Argilemis as a friend eminent in theology.
This was no doubt Andrew Boyd, parson of Eaglesham, a
natural son of Robert, Lord Boyd, and bishop of Argyle and the
Isles from 1613 to 1636.
The Apologia deals in generalities. Theology is preferable
to all philosophy. The Critical art supplements all science.
After referring to learned men he says :
4 Quibus adiungo Buchananum nostrum Solduriorum more
socium, Poetarum quot-quot posterioribus seculis claruere facile
Principem.'
It concludes with a poem (Phaleucum carmen) presented to
Duncan as a Strena, he having been present at an Oration on
Astrology recently made by the author.
Hinc in astriferos feror meatus,
Dulcis gloriolae memor solique
1 There is a copy in the Advocates' Library. The dedication is dated 1st June
1628.
Ninian Campbell of Kilmacolm 189
Natalis, numeros canem perennes.
Aut qualis cecinit Maro Latinus
Ille magniloqua parens Camoenae
Vt hie lacteola parens loquela
Noster Georgius ille Buchananus
Scotorum decus eruditorum,
Et quot sunt hominum Venustiorum.
Campbell resigned his chair at Saumur in 1629 and returned
to Scotland. On his way through Paris in August of that year
he composed an Elegy to the memory of Scaevola Sammarthanus,
that is, Gaucher de Sainte-Marthe, known as Scaevola — a French
orator, jurist, historian and poet, 1536-1623.
From a remark in the Address to the Reader prefixed to his
Treatise upon Death, in which he speaks of many thousands
falling on every side of him, it may perhaps be inferred that he
was at Saumur during a period of plague.
On his return to Scotland, Campbell was next year, 1630,
nominated minister of the upland parish of Kilmacolm in the
county of Renfrew, and underwent the usual trials by the pres-
bytery in the month of March and was approved * willing, apt,
and able to use and exercise the office of minister within the
Kirk of God.' He was accordingly admitted to the charge on
8th April, 1630.
Kilmacolm, as I remember it, fully fifty years ago, was a
small quiet village of thatched cottages and with such limited
opportunity for intercourse with other places, that ' out of the
world and into Kilmacolm ' was a proverbial expression. Two
hundred and thirty years ago it must have been still more
secluded, as the roads which now traverse the parish did not
then exist.
Ninian Campbell must have found it a great change from
the town life of Saumur to the isolation of Kilmacolm, from the
warm climate of Anjou to the moist atmosphere of the Renfrew-
shire uplands ; and speaks of ' his admission to this painful and
dreadful cure of souls.'
He seems, however, to have applied himself diligently to his
parish duty, and took an active part in the work of the presbytery.
He himself states that ' one special point of my charge is to visit
those good Christians over whom I watch at their last farewell
to this world, that I may render a joyful and comfortable account
of them to my Maker the great Shepherd of the flock.'
190 David Murray
The Earls of Glencairn were the principal heritors in the
parish of Kilmacolm, and their seat, Finlaystone House, is
within easy walking distance of the village ; there seems to have
been considerable intercourse between the Earl and his family
and the minister.
The inheritor of the title at the date of Campbell's appoint-
ment to the parish was James, the sixth Earl. In 1 574 he married
a daughter of Colin Campbell of Glenurquhay to whom the
minister may have been related. She died in 1610, and shortly
afterwards he married Agnes, daughter of Sir James Hay of
Fingask, and widow of Sir George Preston of Craigmillar.
He had a numerous family. One of his daughters was Lady
Margaret Cuninghame, whose life was the subject of a curious
piece printed and edited by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe.1
Another daughter, Lady Mary, married John Crawfurd of
Kilbirnie.
The Earl of Glencairn died in 1631 when the parish minister
wrote a Latin Elegy to his memory.
The minister's patron — Archbishop Law — died at Glasgow
upon 1 3th October, 1632, and was buried in the cathedral of
Glasgow, where his widow, Marion Boyle, erected a handsome
monument to his memory.2 On this occasion also Campbell
composed an Elegy, which he dedicated to the city of Glasgow.
Campbell was an adept in Latin verse and occupied his
leisure at Kilmacolm in writing occasional poems.
Besides his Elegy on the Archbishop he composed in 1632
a poem addressed to the University of Glasgow. He had not
forgotten the University, as in this year he subscribed 40 merks
towards the building fund of the University.8 In the same year
he also composed two Elegies on the death of William Blair,
M.A., minister of Dunbarton.
William Blair was a graduate of Glasgow and a contemporary
of Campbell and no doubt his friend. He was for some time a
Regent in the University, an office which he held when he was
1 A Pairt of the Life of Lady M. Cuninghame, daughter of the Earl of Glencairn,
which she had with her first husband the Master of Evandak. Edinburgh 1827, 410.
2 The Archbishop's son was Thomas Law, the well known minister of Inch-
innan, and his grandson was Robert Law, minister of East Kilpatrick, the author
of Memorials or the memorable things that fell out within this island of Britain from 1638
to 1684.
^Munimenta Universitatis Glaiguensis, iii. p. 475.
The parish here given is ' Kilmartin,' but this is evidently an error of tran-
scription as there never was a Ninian Campbell minister of that parish.
Ninian Campbell of Kilmacolm 191
appointed to the parish of Dunbarton. He gave 50 merks
towards the building of the Library House of the University.
His brother was the famous Robert Blair, minister of Ayr,
' precious Mr. Robert Blair,' as he is styled by John Livingston.1
Another friend — William Struthers — sometime minister of
Glasgow, and afterwards of Edinburgh, died in 1633, and
Campbell wrote an Elegy to his memory.
A similar Elegy was written in honour of John Rose,2 poet,
philosopher and theologian, minister of Mauchline ; to whose
memory Campbell also composed an Epitaph. Both were
written in 1634.
In 1635 Campbell published
A Treatise upon Death ; First publicly delivered in a funeral!
Sermon, anno Dom. 1630. And since enlarged^ By N. C.
Preacher of God's word in Scotland at Kilmacolme in the
Baronie of Renfrew.
(Text Hebr. 9. 27)
Edinburgh. Printed by R. Y. for J. Wilson, Bookseller in
Glasgow, Anno 1635. I2mo. pages not numbered. Signatures
A. i-H. 8 in eights.
Of this I have a copy, and there is an imperfect copy in the
Advocates' Library which formerly belonged to the Rev. Robert
Wodrow, minister of Eastwood.
The substance of this treatise the author explains was
1 first publickly delivered by me in a Sermon at the buriall of an
honourable Baron with his religious Ladie both laid in their grave
at once, whose names of blessed memorie I conceal from thee,
for such reasons as I thought good. Which meditation surely I
had buried with them, or at least closed up in my study, if not
the good opinion of conscionable and zealous hearers had raised
it up again from the grave of oblivion, by their diligent search
and lecture of manuscripts here and there dispersed far from
my expectation & former intention. So that I was forced to
review and inlarge the originall copie by the advice of my learned
and much respected friends ; such as reverend prelats, doctours
and pastours of our church, who have best skill in such matters
of spirituall importance.'
^ Brief Historical relation of the life of Mr. John Livingston, p. 4, 1737, 4to.
- Rose graduated M.A. at Glasgow in 1606, and was presented to the parish of
Mauchline in 1621, and died in 1634 age^ 4$. Robert Baillie, Professor of
Divinity, 1642-1661, speaks of him as 'borne and bred with us, a brave poet.'
Letters, ii. p. 402.
192 David Murray
The * honourable baron and religious lady ' were John Craw-
furd of Kilbirnie and Lady Mary Cuninghame before referred to.
In a MS. volume of genealogies by Robert Mylne (? 1 643-
1747), the sharp-tongued poet and antiquary, the following
information is given regarding them :
* John Crawfurd of Kilbirnie and Lady Cuninghame died
both in ye month of November 1629, and were interred the same
day/
In a Latin Epitaph at the end of the volume Campbell says
that not only the father and mother, but also their son all died
in one and the same month, the son first, the father next, and the
mother third — and were all buried in the one tomb. He has
also a Latin dirge to the eternal memory of Crawfurd, who he
indicates died suddenly.
Although the deaths took place in November 1629, the funeral
sermon was not delivered until next year, when the burial no doubt
took place. This is explained in the Preface before the Sermon
itself, where the author speaks of ' embalmed corpses/
The Treatise^ as the author explains, is an expansion of the
funeral sermon, and as it stands is a disquisition on death in
general, something after the style of Cicero, De Senectute,
Probably as originally written it was merely an address to the
mourners assembled at the funeral service.
Prefixed to the sermon as printed there is a curious ' Preface
before Sermon/
' Ye are all here conveened this day to performe the last Christian duties
to a respected and worthy Baron, with his honourable Lady, who both
have lived amongst you in this land, and whose embalmed corps, both yee
now honour with your mourning presence, and happy farewell to their
grave. I am here designed to put you all in minde by this premeditate
speech, that the next case shall be assuredly ours, and perhaps when we
think least of it. Therefore that I may acquaint these who need informa-
tion in this point with the nature and matter of such exhortations, let
them remember with me that there are two sorts of funerall sermons,
approved and authorized by our reformed churches in Europe : the first
whereof I call for order's sake, Encomiastick or Scholastick because it is spent
in the praise of the defunct, and only used in schooles, colledges, academies
and universities, by the most learned ; And this is ordinarily enriched with
pleasant varietie of strange languages, lively lights of powerfull oratorie,
fertile inventions of alluring poesie, great subtilties of solid Philosophic,
grave sentences of venerable fathers, manifold examples of famous histories,
ancient customes of memorable peoples and nations ; and in a word, with all
the ornaments of humane wit, learning, eloquence ; Which howbeit I
might borrow for a while, yet I lay them down at the feet of Jesus, and
Ninian Campbell of Kilmacolm 193
being sent hither not by man, but by God, whose interpreter and
ambassadour I am, I prefer before them the smooth words of Moses, the
stately of Esay, the royall of David, the wise of Salomon, the eloquent of
saint Paul, and the ravishing of saint John, with the rest of divine writers,
God's pen-men out of whose inexhausted treasurie of heavenly consolation,
and saving knowledge, I wish to be furnished with the secret preparation
of the sanctuarie, and to be accompanied with the full power and evidence
of the spirit of my God. For there is another second sort of funerall
sermons, which I call Ecclesiastick or popular, viz. when the judicious and
religious preacher, only for the instruction and edification of the living,
frequently assembled at burials, and earnestly desiring at such dolefull
spectacles to be rejoyced in the spirit of their mindes, taketh some con-
venient portion of scripture, and handleth it with pietie, discretion,
moderation, to his private consolation, the edification of his hearers, and
the exaltation of the most high name of God. So that having no other
ends but these three, and taking God to be my witness that i abhor all
religious or rather superstitious worship given to the dead, and being
naturally obliged to come here, and oftentimes requested by my near and
dear friends, yea abundantly warranted by these who have the prioritie of
place in church government above me, and as it seemeth by your favourable
silence, and Christian attention, invited to speak, I have purposed by the
special! concurrence, and assistance of the spirit of my God, to deliver unto
you a brief meditation upon death. Pray ye all to God to engrave it by
the finger of his all-pearcing spirit in the vive depth of my heart, that
again by way of spirituall communication, I may write it upon the tables of
your hearts (as it were) with a pen of iron, and the point of a diamond,
that both preacher and hearer may lay it up in their memories, and practise
it in their lives and conversations. And I entreat you all (and most of all
these who are of a tender conscience) I entreat you I say, in the tender
bowels of mercie, not to misconstruct my coming hither, which ought
rather to be a matter of singular comfort, then of prejudged censure ; a
matter of profitable instruction, rather then of envious emulation ; a matter
of pious devotion, then of repining contention. I think not shame, with
the glorious apostle to preach in season, and out of season, for the convert-
ing, winning and ingathering of soules. I do not say this, That I consent
to these who contemne and condemne altogether such meetings for albeit I
would confesse unto them, that the time, place, and persons were extra-
ordinarie (as indeed they may seem to these who have not travailed out of
their paroch churches, or seen forrein countries) yet the customes of the
primitive church (see Nazianzen, Ambrose, Jerome, etc.) and of our reformed
churches in France, Genevah, Germanic, upper and lower, in great
Britaine, and elsewhere, maketh all three ordinarie ; and the subject of
this present meditation, viz. Death, proveth the same to be common.'
The concluding paragraph of the sermon is apparently much
as it was when addressed to the congregation :
1 0 happie couple above the eloquence of man and angel ! Many a
loyall husband and chaste spouse would be glad of such an end. And what
194 David Murray
an end ? Let the envious Momus, and injurious backbiter hold their peace,
and let me who stand in the presence of God, and in the face of his people,
and in the chaire of veritie, tell the truth : to wit, That honourable Baron
whose corps lyeth there in the flower of his yeares, in the strength of his
youth, in the prime of his designes, even when young men use to take up
themselves, is fallen, and mowne downe from amongst us, like a may
flower in a green meadow.
His vertuous Lady who having languished a little after him, howbeit
tender in body, yet strong in minde, and full of courage, took her dear
husband's death in so good part, that shee did not give the least token of
hopelesse and helplesse sorrow. Yet wearying to stay after her love, she
posted after him, and slept peaceably in the Lord, as her husband before
her.
This, Noblemen, Gentlemen, and men of account amongst us have
assured mee. So then, as neither the husband's ancient house, nor his
honourable birth, nor his noble allye, nor his able and strong body, nor his
kinde, stout, liberall minde, nor the rest of the ornaments which were in
him alive, and which recommend brave gentlemen to the view of this
gazing world, could keepe him from a preceding death. So neither the
spouse's noble race of generous and religious progenitours, nor a wise
carriage in a well led life, nor the rest of her womanish perfections, could
free her from a subsequent death, both due to them and us for our sins.
God hath forgiven theirs ; God forgive ours also. They have done in few,
all that can be done in many yeares ; They have died well : God give us
the like grace. In the mean time, their reliques and exuvies, terra
depositum, shall lye there amongst other dead corps, of their forebears and
aftercommers, all attending a general resurrection : And their souls the best
part of them, coeli depositum, have surpassed the bounds of this inferior
world, and are carried upon the wings of Cherubims and Seraphins, to the
bosome of Abraham, for to change servitude with libertie, earth with
heaven, miserie with felicitie, and to bee made partakers of that beatifick
vision, reall union, actuall fruition of our God, in whose presence is
fulnesse of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore. How
shall we then conclude, but with a hopefull and eternall farewel, till
it please God, that wee all meet together on that great day, on Sion hill,
and go into these everlasting tabernacles of the temple of the most High, in
the holy citie, supernall Jerusalem, amongst the Hierarchies of that
innumerable companie of Angels, the generall assemblie and church of the
first borne, written in heaven by the finger of God, and the blood of
the Lambe ? When and where they with us, and we with them, and
the whole multitude of the militant and triumphant Church, reunited
under Christ the head, shall be fully and finally glorified.'
The language of the minister is no doubt florid, but the
English is good and shows how the language was handled by an
educated Scotsman.
The Elegy to the University of Glasgow written in 1632,
already mentioned, is likewise addressed ' to the learned men
Ninian Campbell of Kilmacolm 195
who were present at the funeral,' so that it may be inferred that
the wise John Strang, the Principal, and some of the Regents
were present on the occasion.
All the elegies and poems before referred to are appended to
A Treatise upon Death.
In 1636 Ninian Campbell addressed a long poem to the
memory of Patrick Forbes, 1564-1636, bishop of Aberdeen,
which is printed in Funerals of a right reverend Father in God
Patrick Forbes of Corse, bishop of Aberdeen ,x a memorial volume
to his worth by Aberdeen doctors and by many of the most
eminent men in the kingdom.
In the meantime the Glasgow Assembly of 1638 had been
held, and the signing of the Covenant was very eagerly pressed
in every parish. Lady Ann Cuninghame, sister of Lady Kil-
birnie, who married James Hamilton, Lord Arran, afterwards
second Marquis of Hamilton, was in later life an ardent supporter
of the Covenant. On 3Oth August, 1638, Ninian Campbell
was called upon by the parishioners of Kilmacolm to * solemnly
swear that he was neither dealt with nor would suffer himself
to be dealt with to be perverted against the Covenant, nee prece,
precio nee minis? 2 Subsequently the Covenanters took up arms
and the presbytery of Paisley did their part in providing preaching
for the soldiers on the field. In 1641 Mr. Campbell was
appointed to this duty; and again in 1644 he was instructed
by the presbytery to go to the army now in England and supply
there as minister till he was relieved and that ' in my Lord
Loudon's regiment.' He did not, however, go and was
summoned before the presbytery in January, 1645, to ^ear
himself censured for his negligence.
The Solemn League and Covenant between Scotland and
England had been drawn up and energetic measures were taken
to have it subscribed in all parishes. It was read and expounded
from the pulpit on three successive Sundays, and all were there-
after called upon to sign. It was reported at a meeting of the
presbytery of Paisley on 4th January, 1644, that none within
the several parishes had refused to subscribe.
JP. 377. Edinburgh 1845, 8vo. Spottiswoode Society.
2 Murray, Kilmacolm, p. 50. Paisley 1898.
I am indebted to this interesting work for the account of Mr. Ninian
Campbell's ministry at Kilmacolm.
196 David Murray
Ninian Campbell was not a very zealous Covenanter and had
to be frequently rebuked for lukewarmness. In 1650 he was
instructed to speak to the officers of the Covenanting army that
they receive no soldier without sufficient testimonial. After
their defeat at Dunbar all the ministers in the Presbytery were
instructed to summon from the pulpit all who are * fitt and able
for service against the enemie, to enrol their names and to offer
themselves cheerfullie and willinglie to the work.'
The people of Kilmacolm were much more zealous than their
minister, and about this time some of the most serious elders
in the parish wrote a letter to the ever memorable Samuel Ruther-
ford of Anwoth in which they bewail the deadness of the ministry
at Kilmacolm, that they are not sufficiently roused by the terrors
of the law, and that the young are in fear of backsliding. Ruther-
ford replied pointing out that it is no true religion which is
dependent on the character of the minister ; * it will not be bad
for you for a season to look above the pulpit and to look Jesus
Christ more immediately in the face.' In other words, while
he admits that he had heard that their minister was not every-
thing that could be wished, he advised that they be more
concerned about their own personal religion.
Ninian Campbell was more popular elsewhere. On 2nd
January, 1651, a Commission representing the presbytery of
Dunbarton and the parishioners of Rosneath appeared before
the presbytery of Paisley and laid on the table a unanimous call
sustained by the presbytery of Dunbarton together with reasons
why he should be transported from Kilmacolm to Rosneath.
After discussion the presbytery on 2oth February found :
' that Mr. Ninian Campbell, being a native hielander, was skillfull
in the Irysch language, and that the paroch of Rosneth, or a great
part thereof did consist of inhabitants who only had the Irysch
language ; they did find also that the said Mr. Ninian had no
small inclination and disposition to preach the gospell to the
people of his own country and native language, and considering
the Act of the General Assembly anent ministers in the lowlands
who have the Irysch language, therefore they did, for these and
other reasons, transport the said Mr. Ninian Campbell from the
paroch of Kilmacolme to the paroch of Rosneth, and appointed
Mr. James Taylor to goe to the Presbytery of Dunbrittane at
their first meeting to see how he may be well accommodat in
the parish of Rosneth, and to desyre the Presbytery of Dun-
brittane to be cairfull thereof, and appointed Messrs John
Ninian Campbell of Kilmacolm 197
Hamilton and James Taylor to goe to the paroch of Rosneth the
day appointed by the Presbytery of Dunbrittane for the said
Mr. Ninian's induction into and receiving of the charge of the
ministry there, to countenance the same and be witness thereto.'
The appointment of Mr. Ninian to the parish of Rosneath
was very different, it will be observed, from that of his appoint-
ment to Kilmacolm. He was collated to the latter by the
Archbishop of Glasgow ; he was called to Rosneath by the voice
of the people in whom the right had been vested by the Act of
1649, which abolished patronage. |||j
The finding of the presbytery of Dunbarton that * the parish
of Rosneath or a great part thereof did consist of inhabitants
who only had the Irish language ' seems to have been a pious
exaggeration, as there was drawn up at this time for the satis-
faction of the Synod a roll of persons in the parish who could
speak the Gaelic only. No more than thirty-six persons were
found to be in this position, upon which the presbytery declared
that Gaelic was not a necessary qualification for a minister of
Rosneath, if one could be found otherwise suitable. Questions
were still outstanding as to the boundaries and position of the
newly erected parish of Row and its representatives protested
against adding those who spoke Gaelic to their congregation.
It may be mentioned, however, that when it was proposed ta
settle the Rev. James Anderson J as minister of Rosneath in
1722, great difficulties were raised on account of his inability
to speak Gaelic, as there were then twenty-six heads of families
in the parish who could not speak English, and the matter was
compromised by the heritors undertaking to procure a Gaelic
schoolmaster who would act as a catechist.2
Campbell seems to have lived quietly at Rosneath, and probably
as a native Highlander enjoyed the opportunity of using the
Gaelic language in which he was so skilrul.
He died at Rosneath on or about nth March, 1657, aged 58,
survived by his widow and a son then in minority.
His library was estimated to be worth £100 Scots.
We also know that he was proprietor of the three merk land
of Carreask and Ballingoune in the lordship of Cowal and
sheriffdom of Argyle, on the security of which in 1656 he
1 James Anderson, it may be remembered, was father of John Anderson,
1726-1796, professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow and
founder of the Andersonian Institution.
2 Irving, History of 'Dumbartonshire, p. 412. Dumbarton 1860, 410.
198 Ninian Campbell of Kilmacolm
borrowed from Cornelius Crawfurd of Jordanhill the sum of
Scots.1
The Treatise upon Death is of bibliographical interest. There
was no printer in Glasgow until the year 1638, and the numerous
works of Zachary Boyd and of other Glasgow authors had to be
printed in Edinburgh or elsewhere. It is evident, however,
that the Glasgow booksellers were beginning to think that if a
press was not set up in Glasgow, at any rate Glasgow should
appear as the place of publication. Accordingly the imprint
of the Treatise upon Death shows that the book though printed
in Edinburgh was published in Glasgow by John Wilson,
bookseller there.
In the preceding year Wilson had published,
Trve j Christian | Love J To bee sung with any of the J
common tunes of the J Psalms. | [Quotation] | Printed by I. W.
for John Wilson, and are to be sold at his shop in Glasgow.
1634.
The author was Mr. David Dickson.
1. W. stand for John Wrreittoun, printer in Edinburgh, who
was also the printer of some of Zachary Boyd's works and of
those of Sir William Mure of Rowallan.2
Robert Young, the printer of Campbell's Treatise, com-
menced printing in Edinburgh in 1633 and was the printer of
the famous Prayer Book of 1638, rendered memorable by the
Jenny Geddes incident.
Campbell was on terms of intimacy both with Zachary Boyd
and David Dickson. They were members along with the Earl
of Argyle, the Earl of Eglinton, the Earl of Wigton, the Laird of
Keir, Sir WTilliam Mure of Rowallan, and many other notable
persons, lay and clerical, of the Commission of 1639 for the
visitation of the University of Glasgow.3
DAVID MURRAY.
1 See Crawfurd v. M'Cailzone, 28th November, 1663. 2 B.S. 311.
2 Murray, Bibliography ; Its Scope and Methods, p. 74.
3 Munimenta Univenitatis Glasguensis, ii. p. 457.
Samian Ware and the Chronology of the
Roman Occupation
FOR obvious reasons the research of new archaeological
material cannot at present be pursued on the same scale
as it was some years ago. This may turn out to be a blessing
in disguise ; it has at least given us an opportunity to take stock
of our accumulations. In that department of Roman ceramics
which is concerned with terra sigillata or ' Samian ' ware — there
are still many who prefer a misnomer to a barbarism — two
systematic and comprehensive works have recently appeared.
One of these is of capital importance for the study of the early
occupation of Scotland ; it is Knorr's treatment of the decorated
ware of the first century,1 in which the author has put together
material scattered through the half-a-dozen monographs he had
previously published on collections from particular sites. The
other is the work of two English archaeologists — Dr. Felix
Oswald and Mr. T. Davies Pryce.2 Their handsome and richly
illustrated volume covers the whole subject, and is the most
comprehensive work of its kind in English or, indeed, in any
language.
It is a measure of the extent to which our accumulated material
has tended to outgrow our power, or opportunity, to organise it
that the description ' comprehensive ' should apply to a work
which deals with one aspect (the chronological) of one type of
product of a single branch of industry within one restricted area
of the Roman Empire. The general student has only to turn
over the eight and twenty pages of bibliography which he will
find in this volume to realise what an arduous undertaking it was
to compose a chronological account of the Samian ware industry
xKnorr, Topfer und Fabriken verzierter Terra-Sigillata des ersten Jahrhunderts
(Stuttgart, 1919).
2 An Introduction to the Study of Terra Sigillata, by Felix Oswald and T. Davies
Pryce : pp. xii, 286, with eighty-five plates. Longmans, Green and Co. 1920.
z 2s. net.
200 Samian Ware and the Chronology
as a whole. Bibliographical apparatus is no proof of scholarship,
least of all in History and Archaeology, but it is clear from every
page of this book that its authors have conscientiously explored
the whole range of their authorities from Fabroni and Roach
Smith to the latest work of Knorr. There is only one qualifica-
tion to make. We are now able to trace more clearly than we
were the continuity of the Samian ware industry through the
second half of the third century to its partial revival in the fourth,
and to localise this revival at the old pottery centres on the upper
Aisne and Meuse — Lavoye, Les Allieux and Avocourt. The
evidence as to this has recently been summarised by Unverzagt
in his discussion of the pottery of the fourth century fort at Alzei
in Rheinhessen.1 This work had reached Dr. Oswald and
Mr. Pryce in time to find a place in their bibliography and to
give occasion for a brief appendix (IV), but too late for the
material it contains to be incorporated in the structure of their
book. As it is, their section on ' Marne ' ware and their
scattered references to the products of the fourth century have a
detached and accidental character, their systematic treatment
stopping short at the middle of the third century. Still, the
collapse of the industry about that date was so general that its
subsequent history does have very much the character of a
detached incident. As for the authors' treatment of the industry
during the main period of its activity, it is systematic in a high
degree. They have fitted into a well articulated framework a
prodigious mass of detail, none of which is irrelevant to their
purpose.
Since the special value of Samian ware is its usefulness as an
index to date, the purpose of the authors is to present the products
of the industry according to an exact chronological classification.
The chronology is based, as they explain, on properly determined
' site-values,' and accordingly they preface their account with a
table of dated sites. It must be remembered, however, that
many of the dates are themselves inferred from Samian ware,
and that some of them are by no means certain. Mr. Bushe-
Fox's Cerialis date for Carlisle, for example, has been rejected
by the late Professor Haverfield and by Mr. Donald Atkinson
in Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmoreland Archaeological
Society, N.S., XVII, a reference to which should have been given
under * Carlisle,' while Mr. Atkinson's section of that article (on
the Samian stamps, ibid. pp. 241-50) might have been included
1 W. Unverzagt, Die Keramik des Kastclls Alxei (Frankfurt a. M., 1916).
ol the Roman Occupation 201
in the bibliography. Another example of doubtful dating —
and one which will interest the readers of this Review — is the
lower limit assigned to the early occupation of Newstead. It
was Professor Dragendorff1 who first questioned the date pro-
posed by Dr. George Macdonald and Mr. James Curie (the
end of Trajan's reign). He suggested instead an early-Trajanic
date, and many, perhaps most, English archaeologists have
ranged themselves on his side. Dr. Oswald and Mr. Pryce go
further, and stoutly assert (p. 43) that the occupation was * a
short and practically Agricolan one.' That dating cannot stand
against Dr. Macdonald's analyses of the Newstead coins and of
the coins of Roman Scotland as a whole,2 to say nothing of
the structural evidences he has accumulated to show that the
history of the Newstead-Inchtuthil line was not that of Agricola's
Forth-Clyde praesidia. As a matter of fact, Dr. Oswald and
Mr. Pryce appear to have repented of their temerity, for the
Newstead references in the text often relate to late, not early,
Domitianic ware, still oftener to ware described as * of the
Domitian-Trajan period.' The more tenable, and commoner,
statement of Professor DragendorfFs view is that which will be
found repeated in the newly published Report on the excavations
at Slack, near Huddersfield,3 viz. that * the early period at New-
stead ends, at latest^ in the first decade of the second century.'
An obvious difficulty about this date is that it does not fit into
our historical framework. This, however, is not the place to
go into the various evidences. What does invite discussion here
is the evidence, the negative evidence, of the Samian ware, upon
which this date is based.
That the bulk of the Samian ware of the first occupation
reached Newstead well before the end of the first century is
not in dispute. It is what one would expect. The Newstead
supply would go north with, or in the wake of, the troops, or
would be made up in the early years of the occupation. It is
solely with replacements we are concerned in fixing the lower
limit of this occupation — or rather with such replacements as
arrived latish in the occupation and yet themselves got broken
and were cast away and left on the site. That is a narrow field
1 In Journal of Roman Studies, i. (191 1), p. 134.
2 In Proc. Sac. Ant. Scot., Hi. This is an opportunity to draw the attention
of students of the Roman period to the importance of Dr. Macdonald's article.
3 Excavations at Slack, 1913-1915, by P. W. Dodd, M.A., and A. M. Wood-
ward, M.A. Reprinted from the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal^ vol. xxvi.
202 Samian Ware and the Chronology
of evidence. And here we must remember that along the
frontier South Gaulish ware was carefully treasured and had a
remarkably long life, and that Newstead, after campaigning in
Caledonia had come to an end, was a remote and solitary station,
separated from the main military area by what must have been
a very dangerous zone in the later years of Trajan's reign and
offering far too meagre a market to invite risk. It is not sur-
prising that fragments of the early ware at Newstead were found
to have been mended with a leaden clamp. The interpretation
of pottery evidence is not a simple matter of parallel-hunting.
Every site has its peculiarities, and in Trajan's reign Newstead
would be in quite an exceptional situation. A rough analogy
is perhaps given by the Forth-Clyde forts in the later part of the
Antonine occupation. The Samian ware of the Wall is, in the
mass, ware of the reign of Pius. Fortunately we are saved by
the positive evidence of a few coins from unduly restricting the
period of occupation on the negative evidence of the Samian
ware. The presence of these coins warns us that the rarity of
ware definitely assignable to the reign of Marcus cannot be taken
to indicate more than that there may have been little trading
connection with the south after the troubled years round about
1 60. To suppose that the Roman hold on Southern Scotland
was more or less precarious in the reign of Marcus, that the idea
of an early evacuation was perhaps already in the air, would be
quite in keeping with our evidence as a whole. Certainly the
troops no longer built for permanence.
Even if we do judge Newstead by more favoured sites, what
does the evidence amount to ? The marks of Trajanic date for
Lezoux ware accumulated by Dr. Oswald and Mr. Pryce are
meagre in the extreme, and most of them will be found to dissolve
under analysis. The authors themselves usually refer specimens
quite loosely either to the Domitian-Trajan period or to the
Trajan-Hadrian period. With their Domitian-Trajan ware
we need not trouble, since the reference given is usually to
Newstead. From their Trajan-Hadrian ware we must exclude
the products of potters who belong in Scotland to the Antonine
occupation (Censorinus, Divixtus, luliccus, Reginus) and narrow
the field to ware later than any found in the first occupation at
Newstead and earlier than that found on our Antonine sites.
Now ware typologically intermediate between the latest ware of
the first occupation at Newstead and Antonine ware cannot be
said to be common anywhere, and most of what has been identified
of the Roman Occupation 203
is East Gaulish. In Britain we are little concerned with East
Gaulish ware, at least in the pre-Antonine period, but whether
East Gaulish or Lezoux, such intermediate types are so excep-
tional in our province that it may be doubted if much Samian
ware was exported to Britain between the decline of the La
Graufesenque potteries and the full development of the Lezoux
industry. How much Samian ware at Wroxeter or Corbridge
or on Hadrian's Wall itself or in the whole province, for that
matter, can be confidently dated between (say) 107 and 127 ?
And how much again of that can be referred strictly to the
Trajanic half of that period ?
The comparative material from Slack is instructive in this
regard. Slack was first occupied about the same time as New-
stead. The terminal date is uncertain ; the excavators, who
will not allow us an odd seven or ten years elbow-room at New-
stead, help themselves to the handsome margin of fifteen or
twenty years at Slack — from a date early in Hadrian's reign to
the year 140. If 140 be the correct date (as the present writer
is inclined to think it is ; see the Coarse Ware), then Slack has
only three or four scraps of Samian ware to show for the whole
of Hadrian's reign. Anyhow, the site was certainly occupied
beyond the reign of Trajan, for one of the coins dates 1 1 8 and
there is an altar dedicated by a centurion of the Sixth Legion.
Now the few potters' stamps at Slack are all Flavian, and the
plain ware in general (it is not dealt with in detail) seems to answer
to the corresponding ware at Newstead. When we turn to the
decorated ware, we find that seven-eighths of the significant
pieces can be paralleled from Flavian sites, and of these the
majority are paralleled at Newstead. If we eliminate the
Hadrianic pieces from the remainder, we have exactly two
examples for the whole of Trajan's reign. One of these (pi.
XXI, E = p. 48, No. 7) is compared for its general style to pieces
from the Bregenz Cellar find. But pieces which are not
only in the same style but reproduce the actual decorative
elements of the Slack fragment occur at Newstead (Curie,
p. 207; cf. p. 211, No. 4). We are left with a single bowl
of Libertus (Stack, pi. xxi, N) as the only piece of Samian
ware not paralleled at Newstead that Slack has to show
for its Trajanic occupation. ,And if Newstead cannot boast of
a Libertus bowl, yet it has certainly produced more fragments
than Slack which might quite well have reached the site in
Trajan's reign. Yet Slack, unlike Newstead, was situated at
204 Samian Ware and the Chronology
the base of the military area on the direct road connecting the
legionary headquarters of York and Chester. When one
remembers that the series of known events authorises no terminal
date for the early occupation of Newstead between the recall of
Agricola and the disorders with which Trajan's reign closed,
when one considers the evidence of the coins and the mass of
pre-Antonine finds from Newstead and Camelon, as well as the
structural evidences from the Newstead-Inchtuthil line as a whole ;
and when, finally, one estimates the negative evidence of the
Samian ware with due regard to the evidence of other British
sites of the same date and to the exceptional situation of Newstead,
the reasonable conclusion remains that stated years ago by Dr.
George Macdonald and Mr. James Curie, viz. that a hold was
maintained on Newstead till the close of Trajan's reign. If
Dr. Oswald and Mr. Pryce care to add that during the last ten
years or so of this occupation, little or no Samian ware was being
traded over Cheviot, well and good. It is more than probable.
The Newstead controversy initiated by Professor Dragendorff
brings into clear relief the uncertainty of the evidence of Samian
ware on its negative side. Negative or positive, indeed, its
evidence is always liable to be misleading when taken by itself.
That is a fact that Dr. Oswald and Mr. Pryce should have
emphasised sharply, not slurred over, knowing, as they do, how
empiric in its method much of our archaeology is. There is no
reason now to fear that the value of Samian ware will be under-
rated. Its value is established. Often it is the only guide to
date that we have. When it can be brought into relation with
other evidences, and especially with an historical framework
such as inscriptions and texts provide, its value is immense. It
now forms an integral part of our Roman studies, and therefore
every student of the Empire has reason to be grateful to Dr.
Oswald and Mr. Pryce for having marshalled in orderly proces-
sion myriads of details (and the details are everything) accumu-
lated by direct observation in our museums or drawn from hosts
of monographs and periodicals, most of them foreign and many
of them not easy to procure. The illustrations alone represent
a great achievement of exploration, judgment and selection.
The authors have done a service not only to the student but to
the subject, for by presenting us with a framework to which new
acquisitions can be related as they are won, they have done much
to ensure that the progress of our knowledge in this department
shall be a systematic growth. Nor is it only the archaeologist
of the Roman Occupation 205
who is in their debt. The historian also will find here much
material to invite speculation. That is an indulgence the
authors deliberately deny themselves. Once only do they break
their self-imposed rule ; it is to remark that the later products
of Lezoux ' furnish a graphic illustration of the gradual bar-
barisation of the Empire ' (p. 20). But Lezoux ware was
the ware of the north-western frontiers, and is no test for the
whole Empire. In the Rhone valley (to say nothing of the
Tiber) they would have none of it. It is hardly a fair measure
even for the Arvernian, who made this ware for export. If
Samian ware in the Arvernian 's hands became a cheap and nasty
article, that was because the people along the frontier were becom-
ing Romanised, not because the Arvernian was becoming
barbarised. What he was becoming was commercialised.
That was in some ways a bad thing, no doubt ; but do Dr.
Oswald and Mr. Pryce seriously maintain that the Arvernian
was a less civilised being in the Antonine period than in the
Flavian period ? One can only suppose that here again the
authors have been momentarily hoodwinked by Professor
Dragendorff, who possesses in a high degree the German gift
of seeing in the Romanisation of the barbarian nothing but the
barbarising of the Roman.
S. N. MILLER.
Reviews of Books
A HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ARMY. Vols. IX. and X. 1813-1815. By
the Hon. J. W. Fortescue. Pp. xxv, 534 ; xviii, 458 with volume
of 30 maps. 8vo. London: Macmillan & Co. 1920. 845.
WHEN, more than twenty years ago, Mr. Fortescue published the first
instalment of his great enterprise he hoped to carry his story to 18/0 in
another couple of volumes. The twenty years have seen no less than eight
more volumes from Mr. Fortescue's pen, to say nothing of four separate
volumes of maps, and it is still a far cry to 1870. Indeed, Mr. Fortescue
suggests that he may perhaps find it necessary to call a halt at the point to
which these volumes have taken him, since, as he points out, the remunera-
tion he has received for his labours is hardly calculated to encourage him to
continue ; indeed, it has largely been through the help given him by his
appointment as the King's Librarian at Windsor that he has been able to
carry his story down to 1815. It is to be hoped he will continue his
valuable work, but it would have been particularly regrettable had he not
been able to complete the story of Wellington's campaigns, more especially
because what stands out as specially valuable in his treatment of the
Waterloo campaign is that Waterloo has been to him no separate and dis-
proportioned study, but that he sees it as one among Wellington's many
campaigns, brings to the study of Wellington's ideas and actions in 1815 a
profound knowledge of the Duke's strategy and tactics, and realises
how very much the Duke owed at more than one critical moment in the
campaign to the fact that he was face to face with opponents like Ney and
Soult, whom he had beaten so often that they were under the influence of
the moral ascendency he .had established over them. The mere fact that
it was Wellington whom Ney was facing on the morning of June i6th
caused the French Marshal to people the apparently (and really) lightly
held Quatre Bras position with imaginary red-coats, hidden but ready to
spring into activity directly he launched his attack and capable of withering
his columns with the deadly musketry Busaco had taught him to respect.
Mr. Fortescue might perhaps have made even more use of his study of the
Peninsula when dealing with the 1815 campaign. A noticeable feature in
Wellington's strategy in Spain and Portugal is his fondness for the outflank-
ing movement ; these volumes contain the most remarkable and outstanding
examples of it, the campaign and battle of Vittoria, and the manoeuvres
by which the Duke forced Soult away from Bayonne in 1814 by threaten-
ing his flank. It was because he knew the peculiar vulnerability of his
position in 1815 to anything like an outflanking movement against his right
Fortescue : History of the British Army 207
that the Duke displayed that anxiety about that flank which contributed
to delay his concentration on June I5th (though the main responsibility for
that delay lies on the shoulders of the Prussians who failed to give their ally
adequate information), which again caused him on June i8th to leave a
strong detachment at Hal. Mr. Fortescue curiously enough has not
brought out the most probable explanation for that puzzling episode,
though he tells how the Duke told Colonel Woodford, the staff-officer
whom General Colville had sent over from Hal for orders on the morning
of June 1 8th, that it was already too late for Colville's division to reach the
field. The Duke never expected the battle to be prolonged until the close
of the day ; he was expecting the Prussians to be up and in line hours
earlier than they were and, as Mr. Fortescue shows, with better staff-work
on Gneisenau's part in arranging the march the Prussians might have been
on the field at two o'clock.1 Had this happened the battle would have been
decided before Colville could have appeared. Mr. Fortescue rightly says
that it is ' hardly profitable ' to speculate on ' the possible issue of the fight
had the Prussians failed to appear,' because Wellington 'only accepted
battle on the understanding that Bliicher would support him,' though he
makes a good point, not usually properly appreciated, that at the time of
the final attack by the Imperial Guard Wellington had still a considerable
part of his reserves in hand.2 Quite apart from Chassis Dutch-Belgians,
of whose claim to have defeated the Imperial Guard Mr. Fortescue says
very little but pretty obviously does not think much, there were two
British cavalry brigades and two Hanoverian infantry brigades * practically
untouched,' while, in addition to Adam's strong and thoroughly effective
brigade, four other battalions of British infantry were far from as exhausted
as the rest and were certainly fresher than any French troops except the
Old Guard.
Wellington's ' admirable husbandry of his reserves ' is a point of which
Mr. Fortescue rightly makes much, and the Duke's mastery of the art of
tactics is certainly well illustrated by the battle of June i8th. As Mr.
Fortescue says, ' throughout the long agony of eight terrible hours the
Allied line was literally pervaded by Wellington,' he 'said himself that he
personally had saved the battle four times and if he had said forty times
he would not have overstated the truth.' 3 Certainly as far as tactics go
Napoleon cuts a poor figure at Waterloo in comparison ; Mr. Fortescue is
fully justified in condemning the French attacks as 'incoherent,' 'what
Napoleon himself would have called ' d^cousus.' ' Whatever the initial
responsibility of the Emperor's subordinates for the more salient blunders,
like the formation of d'Erlon's corps or for the wasteful attacks on
Hougoumont, a most conspicuous example of the abuse of Marshal Foch's
great principle of ' economy of forces,' there can be no question that
Napoleon took no steps to interfere with either. Judging by Waterloo
alone, Mr. Fortescue has ample justification for calling the Duke
' Napoleon's equal, if not his superior, in the actual direction of a battle.' 4
It is a bold saying, no doubt, but after all it is not in tactics that Napoleon
was at his greatest, and Wellington's greatness as a tactician is generally
1 x. pp. 340-342 and 412. sx. p. 416. 3x. 411. 4 x. 409.
208 Fortescue : History of the British Army
admitted even by those who have not studied the Peninsular War closely
enough to appreciate the soundness and the daring of his strategy.
Waterloo, though the most controversial and to most people the most
familiar and absorbing of the topics covered in these volumes, does not
exhaust the interest of Mr. Fortescue's pages. He gives a much clearer
account of the complicated operations in the Pyrenees than Napier does,
his map of this is a great help, and the recent publication of an exhaustive
French account by Captain Vidal de la Blache has resolved many doubts
as to the doings of our adversaries. Mr. Fortescue might have shown how
admirably Wellington's operations illustrate the principles laid down in
Field Service Regulations for the conduct of an outpost screen, but he
happens to be unusually brief in his comments on this particular operation.
Of the Vittoria campaign and of Wellington's invasion of France he gives
excellent accounts, which again owe much in lucidity to the copiousness
and excellence of the maps. Wellington ran many risks in the operations
which culminated in Toulouse, but it is interesting to notice how
thoroughly he had taken the measure of Soult at this time and how he
suited his strategy to the conditions and to his opponent.
Apart from the operations in which Wellington was concerned, Mr.
Fortescue has not much to tell. There are the unsatisfactory operations of
Murray and Bentinck on the East Coast of Spain, Bentinck's capture of
Genoa in April, 1814, Sir Thomas Graham's expedition to Holland and
his attempt on Bergen op Zoom and the closing stages of the American
War. Mr. Fortescue gives an excellent and sympathetic account of
Graham's doings ; he was unfortunate in his allies, Billow's Prussians, who
left him very much in the lurch and he had some very indifferent material
under him, battalions which were full of raw recruits with relatively few
officers of experience. To Bentinck Mr. Fortescue is perhaps less than
fair. Bentinck was more of a politician than a soldier, and his interference
in Italian politics was insubordinate, wrong-headed and doctrinaire, but his
expedition to Genoa is rather scantily treated. Mr. Fortescue should not
have fallen into the error of stating that the I4th Foot occupied Genoa in
December, 1813, the letter he quotes from the Castlereagh Correspondence1
is obviously wrongly dated and belongs to January, 1815, not 1814. We
wish also that Mr. Fortescue could have found a little more space for two
other out of the way and unfamiliar episodes : the doings of the rocket-battery
of the Royal Artillery which represented Great Britain at the * Battle of
the Nations ' at Leipzig and the adventures of the detachment of the 35th
Foot who joined the Austrians on the Adriatic in 1814. The American
campaign he tells very well ; there is indeed no other good modern
account of Pakenham's repulse at New Orleans, and it is interesting to
notice that the usual version of the text-books about the Americans
< repulsing Wellington's veterans ' is hardly accurate. The two battalions
who failed in the assault were not Peninsular veterans , one had been in
the Peninsula, it is true, but had been sent back as a skeleton and had
been filled up with recruits, the other had never been under Wellington at
all. Similarly, though many Peninsular battalions had reached Canada
*Cf. ix. p. 482.
Porteus : Captain Myles Standish 209
before the operations on the Great Lakes ended hardly any of them arrived
in time to be seriously engaged.
A long chapter on the organisation, recruiting, discipline and interior
economy in general of the Army during the period 1803-1814 is a valuable
piece of work, and by no means the least interesting in the book ; indeed,
one would have been glad of more on this subject ; more statistics as to
numbers, as to the distribution of the Army, proportion of foreigners and
similar things would have been appropriate and welcome. In a work of
such length and dealing with so many matters of detail absolute accuracy
is extraordinarily hard to attain, but Mr. Fortescue seems to have fallen
rather below his own standard in this respect, for these errors are unusually
numerous and it is hard to understand how he came to overlook the par-
ticulars about Darmagnac's German brigade at Vittoria ; they are fully given
in Commandant Sauzey's Les Allemands sous les Algles Francoises.
C. T. ATKINSON.
CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH : HIS LOST LANDS AND LANCASHIRE CONNEC-
TIONS. A new investigation. By the Rev. Thomas Cruddas Porteus,
B.A., B.D., vicar of St. John the Divine, Coppull, Lancashire. Pp.
xii, 115. Cr. 8vo. With 8 Illustrations. Manchester University
Press. 1920. 35. 6d.
THIS little volume in its paper cover is a pleasantly written study of one of
the Pilgrim Fathers associated with the men of the ' Mayflower,' who
founded the colony of New England in the early part of the seventeenth
century. Much has been written about the expedition in 1620, and the
ancestral homes and later fortunes of its members. There is a wealth of
mystery about Captain Myles Standish, by no means the least insignificant
of the so-called Pilgrims, touching his religion, pedigree and lost estates.
Mr. Porteus has set himself the task to clear up what other writers have
left obscure about the hero of his choice, and he has achieved considerable
success. A curious feature of Captain Standish's character may be gathered
from the contents of his library, to which a chapter has been devoted.
There are several interesting illustrations — one of which, that of the hero
himself from an American painting, is fitly placed as a frontispiece to the
volume — a bibliography, and a meagre index. JAMES WILSON.
EXTRACTS FROM NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE COUNCIL MINUTE BOOK, 1639-
1656. Pp. xxiv, 243. With one Illustration. 8vo. Newcastle-
upon-Tyne : printed for the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Records Committee
by the Northumberland Press. 1920.
CERTAIN members of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
have formed themselves into a committee for the purpose of publishing a
series of annual volumes dealing with the records of Durham, Northum-
berland, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and this volume of extracts from the
Newcastle Council Minute Book for the years 1639 to 1656 is the first
fruit of their public-spirited undertaking. The transcription of the records
has been carried out by Miss Madeleine Hope Dodds, who has also written
210 Newcastle-upon-Tyne Council Minute Book
the introduction to the volume and prepared the index. It is regrettable
that in so many cases borough records are imperfect ; pre-Reformation
minutes and others having been destroyed by fire and accident and general
neglect. These extracts usefully supplement the information which is
contained in local histories. Newcastle in the period dealt with was even
then a busy coal port, and the Council worked their own coal. The
town was not then wholly industrialised, and the cows of the burghers
were still driven daily to the common pasture. An interesting agreement
is given in extenso dated 1653 between the mayor and burgesses and Robert
Hunter, the town's neatherd, for regulating his duties during both summer
and winter seasons. Many glimpses are obtained of the troubles, financial
and administrative, which afflicted the town of Newcastle during the
Cromwellian period.
It is proposed that the volume for 1921 shall consist of abstracts in
English from the Curia Regis Rolls, to be edited by Mr. A. Hamilton
Thompson, F.S.A. RQBERT
STUDIES IN STATECRAFT, being Chapters Biographical and Bibliographical,
mainly on the Sixteenth Century. By Sir Geoffrey Butler. Pp. viii.
140. 8vo. Cambridge University Press. 1920. los.
THIS short book — the title is not a very happy one — contains five studies
and two bibliographies: (i) on Rodericus Sancius of Arevalo, 1404-1471,
Bishop of Zamora, the castellan of St. Angelo at Rome under Pope Paul
IL, with special reference to his dialogue on peace and war, and a biblio-
graphy of his writings ; (2) on the alleged monarchial opinions of the
French civilians in the sixteenth century ; (3) on William Postel, 1510-
1581, the French oriental scholar and political idealist, with a revised, but
not original, bibliography of Postel's writings ; (4) on Sully and his Grand
Design ; (5) on Le Nouveau Cynee of Emerich Cruc£.
The most original of these studies is the first. Sir Geoffrey Butler has
rescued an interesting man from oblivion, a man who has an indirect
connection with the Renaissance in England. His dialogue on peace and
war — in which the interlocutors are Bishop Roderic himself and the papal
biographer, librarian and humanist, Platina — survives in a manuscript now
in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Sir Geoffrey Butler thinks that it
was brought to Canterbury by Sellinge, prior of Christ Church. It after-
wards came into the hands of Archbishop Parker. Unhappily the dialogue
is rather trivial, of no great importance to students of the Renaissance. It
is to be regretted that Sir Geoffrey Butler, instead of giving it unmerited
importance before an elaborate political background, did not make it the
occasion of a wider treatment of Roderick's works, especially of his popular
Speculum humanae vitae. Moreover, Sir Geoffrey's analysis of the humanist
circle in Rome during the pontificate of Paul II. is not quite convincing.
He involves the whole group in the movement, surely not very
serious, originated by the disgruntled abbreviators, and does less than
justice to that very attractive leader of the Roman Academy, Pompon ius
Laetus.
Butler : Studies in Statecraft 2 1 1
The brief essay on the French civilians, reprinted from the English
Historical Review, is timely and helpful. Sir Geoffrey Butler sets himself
to correct the facile impression that professors of Roman law in the
sixteenth century were thorough-going apologists of absolutism. He
might have pointed out that the traditions of the law schools in Italy were
still less committed to monarchical doctrines unrelated to the political
exigencies of the Middle Ages. To see this, one need only read the admir-
able essay on Bartolus, written by the late Mr. Cecil Woolf, especially the
pages on Bartolus' commentary on the law of the Digest relating to the
Decuriones, and their ' ambitiosa decreta.' Reference to medieval thought
would also have helped to give proportion to Sir Geoffrey Butler's essay on
William Postel. The hard-faced legists who gathered round King Philip
the Fair of France, nearly three centuries earlier than Postel's day, were
also familiar with the conception of world peace through world power, and
like him, though in a very different spirit, were not uninterested in oriental
studies. But they, perhaps, are not fit company for the attractive, dis-
interested, crackbrained scholar whom Sir Geoffrey sketches with such
sympathy.
The last essays are slight. The paper on Le Nouveau Cynee adds
nothing to the work of Cruce's American editor,1 and the more elaborate
study of Sully and his Grand Design is a skilful resume of the conclusions
of Charles Pfister and other writers on this famous theme, with the
additional suggestion that Sully interpolated the project in his memoirs and
attributed it to Henry IV. in order to * provoke the little men of the
succeeding generation to salutary thought as might still save the State.'
Even if this view be accepted it does little to increase the practical signifi-
cance of the Grand Design. Sully was doubtless a better balanced man
than the Emperor Maximilian L, but they seem to have been alike in
their capacity for solemn self-glorification. When as great a man as
Henry IV. did arise in France, he unhappily preferred other methods
of salvation than the method of the Grand Design.
Sir Geoffrey Butler's book is good reading for an idle day, but, in spite
of its rather pretentious title-page and its impressive manner, it is not
a serious contribution to the history of statecraft. Those who wish to see
a discussion of the ideas of Postel, Sully and Cruce in a general setting
should turn in preference to Christian Lange's History of Internationalism
(1919). Sir Geoffrey Butler presumably has no illusions on the subject.
One reader at any rate, while grateful to him for the pleasure which these
essays have given, hopes that he will concentrate upon the French civilians.
A good monograph is needed on their political thought in its varied
relations with contemporary history and learning, and Sir Geoffrey Butler
would seem to be well qualified for the arduous task of writing it.
F. M. POWICKE.
1 A study of Cruce, which I have not seen, has recently been written by
M. Louis Lucas.
2 1 2 Quennell : Everyday Things in England
A HISTORY OF EVERYDAY THINGS IN ENGLAND, 1066-1799. Written
and Illustrated by Marjorie and C. H. B. Quennell. In two parts.
Pp. xiv, 208 ; xii, 208. 8vo. With 200 Illustrations. London :
B. T. Batsford, Ltd. 1920.
THIS is a creditable effort to capture young recruits for the study of
antiquity. There is a regular gallery of drawings, 191 plain and 9 beauti-
The Great Hall.
fully coloured, representative of English life across the ages. Almost all of
these follow originals or sound models, and the result is a fairly effective
picture of the house, the castle, the court, the church, the ship, the chase,
the games, the soldiering, and the industry, as well as the everyday, sabbath-
day and holiday life of the land from the fabulous age of Arthur down to
the eighteenth century. The coloured illustrations are, for the most part,
representations of costume in different centuries. The text is written
Quennell : Everyday Things in England 213
for the comprehension of youth, and the author's own technique is trimmed
to that pattern, and the work is well-suited to allure the schoolboy and lay
A Windmill in Essex, to illustrate early mechanism of windmills.
the foundations of an antiquary. There are numerous extracts from
Pepys' Diary in the account of the seventeenth century ; these refer to the
ordinary life of a household, and bring out in a very vivid manner the ways
214 Quennell : Everyday Things in England
of a Londoner in Pepys' time. Agreeable examples of the artistic revisu-
alising of the past occur in the figures here by permission reproduced. The
illustration of the thirteenth century duel of Walter Blowberme and
Hamo le Stare would have been better had it adhered more faithfully to
A Judicial Combat.
the figure which Professor Maitland had photographed for his first volume
of Pleas of the Crown.
The idea of the book is capital and is fairly attained. History is not
mere politics, it has all life for its province, and 'everyday things' are
standard memories.
CATALOGUE OF THE ROMAN POTTERY IN THE MUSEUM, TULLIE HOUSE,
CARLISLE. By Thomas May, F.S.A., and Linnaeus E. Hope, F.S.I.
(Reprinted from the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and
Archaeological Society's Transactions.) Pp. 85, with 19 Plates. 8vo.
Kendal : Titus Wilson & Son. 1917.
THE Museum contains a collection of Roman pottery found in Carlisle or
•on neighbouring sites on the Wall of Hadrian. Altogether 194 items are
catalogued and described in detail. These consist of complete vessels or
decorated fragments in Terra Sigillata, as well as a considerable number of
examples of pottery in coarse wares. There are appendices containing lists
of potters' names on Terra Sigillata, on Mortaria, and Amphorae. The
description of each item is full, with many references to parallels at home or
on the Continent ; indeed, the piling up of references, especially in dealing
with potters' stamps, tends to become somewhat confusing. The stamp
CRICIROF on a platter, Dragendorff's type 18, is assigned to a potter working
at Banassac or Lezoux A.D. 70-140. The series of references terminates
with one showing that a potter of this name was working at Trier
A.D. 175-225. We are told that the style of the Trier potter is different
from that of the Central Gaulish potter, but as Dragendorff's type 18 had
gone out of fashion long before A.D. 175, the reference is of no value for the
identification of the fragment now in Carlisle.
The earliest Sigillata belongs to the Flavian period, to which the first
occupation of Carlisle must be assigned. There are also specimens of this
Catalogue of Roman Pottery, Tullie House 215
ware from Central and East Gaulish kilns operating in the second century.
Among the coarser ware, examples carry the series down to the fourth
century. One fragment of a white flagon is assigned to a period before the
middle of the first century, but it seems doubtful whether any of the pottery
is earlier than the reign of Vespasian. The plates, on the whole, are good,
especially the drawings of vessels of coarse undecorated wares. We regret
that the authors did not sum up the evidence to be obtained from an
examination of the pottery as a whole. A comparison of the collection
with those of Silchester and York, which have both been dealt with by
Mr. May, might have afforded some interesting information on the different
sources of supply of these towns, and the areas of distribution of native
potteries. JAMES CURLE.
DUMBARTONSHIRE : COUNTY AND BURGH FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO
THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, forming Part II. of a
Revised History of Dumbartonshire. By John Irving. Pp. 143-350.
Quarto. Dumbarton : Bennett & Thomson. 1920.
THE author of this revised history of Dumbartonshire, originally written
by his father sixty years ago, has divided it into three parts published
separately : I. Dumbarton Castle, II. The County and Burgh, and III.
Its Industries.
This, volume, Part II., starts with early Roman history, with which
Dumbarton, being at the west end of the wall of Antoninus, naturally had
a close connection. Apart from the sculptured relics the author mentions
and describes, mostly of a military nature, there are few social traces of the
Roman occupation, and almost none in place names.
One chapter deals with the Saints and other ecclesiastical crusaders,
many of whom came over from Ireland to missionize Scotland in early
times, and it is one of the mysteries of Irish history how St. Patrick, their
patron saint, came to be born in or near Old Kilpatrick.
To the general reader Mr. Irving's chapter on clan warfare will bring
the touch of lively adventure and romance. He fights the Battle of
Glenfruin (the Glen of Sorrows) over again. He might perhaps have
made a little more of it, because, though it happened so long ago as 1603,
the Dumbarton boy of the present day is not allowed to forget it. What
rankles in his mind is the cold-blooded massacre by the Macgregors of the
Dumbarton students who came out to see the fun, and the tradition is that
the stone where the deed was done, Leck-a Mhinisteir, or the Minister's
Flagstone, can never have its blood stains washed away.
The murder of the students is perhaps a myth ; for the indictment upon
which the * Rhoderick Dhu,' who was their leader, in reality Allaster
Macgregor of Glenstrae, and four of his companions were tried and after-
wards executed, charges them with the slaughter of seven score Colquhotins,
Macfarlanes and others, among them Tobias Smollett, bailie of Dumbarton
and ancestor of Roderick Random — but not a word about the Dumbarton
bairns.
Everybody knows that the Macgregors were, for their predatory exploits
both before and at the battle of the Weeping Glen, put to fire and sword,
216 Irving : Dumbartonshire
hunted and harried, and forbidden to bear their own name. Their clan,
the clan McAlpine, though descended from kings was taboo, and many of
them disguised themselves as Campbells, Grahams and the like, but never
as a Colquhoun or a Macfarlane. The blood feud was too strong for that.
And later there came their great deliverer, Sir Walter Scott, who has done
more to remove the black mark against them and to create a literary glory
for Dumbartonshire and the Lennox country than either the Macgregors
or Dumbarton knows.
Mr. Irving records the fact that the missing Charter of Confirmation by
James I. to the town of Dumbarton, 1609, has been found, and in a
somewhat curious way. In 1907 there was a litigation connected with a
claim by the Parish Minister of Dumbarton for a glebe, which went from
the Sheriff Court to the Court of Session. In Edinburgh during the
hearing of the case it was discovered to be in the possession of Edinburgh
University, to whom it had been bequeathed by Dr. David Laing, the
well known antiquarian. Mr. Irving says it was never ascertained how it
came into Dr. Laing's possession. One has a fairly good idea. It was
known in Dumbarton to have gone to Edinburgh as a number of process
in a litigation with the town many many years ago — 1813 — and had never
returned. Dumbarton brought an action against the University [1909.
i.S.L.T. (O.H.) 51], got the charter back on condition of paying expenses
as a kind of storage rent all these years.
Dumbartonshire is a fine county, and possesses in this book a good
history. * This country,' says Tobias Smollett in Humphry Clinker, ' is
justly styled the Arcadia of Scotland. . . A perfect paradise, if it were not,
like Wales, cursed with a weeping climate. . .' p. T BLAIR.
DAVID URQUHART. Some Chapters in the Life of a Victorian Knight-
Errant of Justice and Liberty. By Gertrude Robinson, with an
introduction by F. F. Urquhart. Pp. xii, 328, and 5 Illustrations.
8vo. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1920. 2Os.net.
DAVID URQUHART was preeminently a man who might have made history.
After reading this account of his activities — as the author truly says it is not
a biography — one wonders why he hardly left a mark at all. Perhaps the
reason is that single-handed he tried almost consciously to mould history, in
an age peculiarly unsuited to such an attempt.
In the time in which he lived the soil was most unreceptive for seeds
such as a prophet like Urquhart had to sow ; but the reader of these
memories cannot but feel that Urquhart's own nature was largely responsible
for his failure. He would have rated very highly the importance of the
individual in history, and, though he would probably not have recognised it
in so many words, perhaps highest of all the opinions of David Urquhart.
From the very earnestness with which he believed in his own convictions,
he was contemptuous and intolerant of the opinions of others ; there were no
half-tones, every deed and policy was either white or black, right or wrong.
He, Urquhart, had no doubts, so none could exist.
He started life with little in the way of position to help him and with his
nature one is not surprised to find him very soon developing a talent for
Robinson : David Urquhart 217
knocking his head against a stone wall, and so ending any hope of bringing
his influence to bear on British or foreign policy from within. Not being
dependent on his own efforts for a livelihood, he was able to devote his life
to the attempt to influence, from without, the political methods of his time.
He was an idealist and a prophet but he was almost a practical statesman
as well. He possessed in an unusual degree the personality which fascinated
others and impressed them with the justice and importance of any scheme on
which he might at the time have concentrated his energies ; a man who
could persuade the leaders of Chartists and revolutionaries to abandon their
schemes of personal betterment in favour of a system of self-education and
international development by means of committees of working men to study
foreign policy, was capable of being a power in the land.
Urquhart's knowledge of European politics was startling ; he travelled
often and widely. Wherever he went he showed the same power of seeing
below the surface and getting behind the scenes ; he was an Englishman and
a Protestant and yet when in Turkey he became a Turk and so important
was his influence that for the rest of his life he never altogether lost it.
When he was in Rome, he became the ally and leader of Cardinals, meeting
the Pope and almost succeeding in passing a policy of his own through a
Vatican Council. So many and so complex were the threads that he held
in his hands that statesmen from Britain, Cardinals from Rome, Viziers
from Turkey all came to visit him in his chalet on the lower slopes of Mount
Blanc, and came not to give but to receive information in regard to their
respective charges.
His views never lacked in originality, and his habit of showing the
merits of politics not commonly popular in his country, enabled him to
utter several prophecies the accuracy of which was almost astounding in
after years to those who had heard them.
Urquhart strove for the establishment of a law of nations ; in any
civilised nation law was supreme. If any man sinned against the law he
was punished according to the law, but as between nations this was not so.
This Urquhart -considered subversive in the long run of all morality, public
and private ; the fact that, though in essence might was right, it was
generally considered advisable by the nation which planned aggression
(in Urquhart's mind this was always Russia) by means of tortuous diplomacy
to give some cloak of virtuous intention to their deeds, did not make matters
better. He proposed, as the only remedy, the re-introduction of religion
into politics. The only source from which he could hope to influence
politics through religion was the Papacy, to the Papacy therefore he turned,
and though never a Catholic, he was, for the later years of his life, in
constant and intimate touch with the internal politics of the Vatican,
because through it he saw his only chance of reforming the external
politics of Europe.
With this idea as his foundation Urquhart regarded Italy from a point of
view very different to that usually adopted by the English historian. The
states of the Church must remain. In order to set a standard and example
to the nations, it was necessary that the Pope should be also a temporal
sovereign. He had the advantage of not being an hereditary sovereign.
218 Hallward : William Bolts
He was priest as well as king, typifying the standing of religion in politics,
and because his temporal kingdom was so insignificant he could have no
ambitious projects in this world and for that very reason his moral influence
would be all the greater, and in addition, he carried behind him the whole
weight of the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. With these views
then, Urquhart looked with no favourable eye on the aspirations of Victor
Emmanuel, on the plottings and deep laid plans of Cavour. Garibaldi was
to him what recently D'Annunzio has been to us.
The book is almost too condensed, and yet it is obviously incomplete, so
that one hopes a fuller attempt will be made to write a life of Urquhart. His
points of view are very different from those commonly taken in this country,
and whether right or wrong, they were those of a very able man who spent
his life and energy in the pursuit of a noble ideal.
HAMISH A. MACLEHOSE.
WILLIAM BOLTS. A Dutch Adventurer under John Company. By
N. L. Hallward, M.A. Pp. x, 210. 8vo. Cambridge : at the
University Press. 1920. 155. net.
THIS book is a veritable mine of interesting extracts, but unfortunately no
adequate references are given. Despatches received from the governor of
Bengal, consultations of the Council and intercepted letters, all are quoted
at length, but the author does not make it clear whether the MSS.
materials which he has used are to be found in Calcutta or at the India
Office ; even printed authorities are treated in the same way, Verelst's
Bengal, Bolts' own writings, and other books are freely used, but reference
is seldom made to the page from which the extract is taken. It is a little
disappointing too that the number of quotations has prevented the author
from thrashing out some of the interesting minor problems connected with
Bolts' career. Our appetite was whetted by the mystery of Bolts' appoint-
ment as alderman of the mayoral court of Calcutta, when he was actually
suspended and even under threat of dismissal from the company's service.
His accusation too, that the enmity of the council against him was merely
the outcome of their private jealousy as rival traders, deserves further
discussion.
Despite these small drawbacks the book is most interesting reading, for
William Bolts was a skilful merchant and bold adventurer who entered the
company's service as factor just at the time when Clive's victory at Plassy
had brought Bengal within the grip of the company's servants. Bolts'
career reflects the state of misrule and oppression which existed in Bengal
before the reforms of Warren Hastings and the interference of Parliament
in the affairs of the company. After six years of private trade Bolts had
amassed such a fortune that he was able to resign his official position and
to defy the orders of the council for two years longer, until in despair they
deported him from India. Returning to England he set himself to ruin his
enemies, and began a series of actions, notably against Governor Verelst,
whom he succeeded in ruining. After becoming bankrupt himself he
determined to seek fresh openings for his energy abroad, and trading on his
Dutch descent he got into touch with the Empress Queen Maria Theresa.
Hallward : William Bolts 219
His bold plans for reviving the Ostend Company, which had been such a
thorn in the flesh to the English in the early days of the century, were
favourably received, and Bolts reappears in India as a Lieut. -Colonel in the
Imperial army and at the head of a trading expedition, to alarm the English
by his intrigues with the French agent at Poona during the difficult days of
the American War of Independence. But his scheme soon fell through,
and Bolts disappears from fame to die a pauper in a Paris hospital in 1808.
The bold schemes of this industrious scamp have an interest beyond the
mere record of travel and adventure, for Bolts' career just covers that great
period of change in India from Clive's conquest of Bengal to the governor-
ship of Wellesley, when Britain stood forth as the paramount power in
India. And Bolts' part in this drama, though a minor one, is yet significant.
He is the type of unscrupulous servant whose cajlous abuse of the right of
private trade made the first years of the company's rule such a curse to
Bengal ; his intrigues with the Nawab of Oudh and the Dutch at Chinsura
show the danger of a lax system of control over the Europeans in India ;
at home his vicious attacks on the company helped to swell the growing
feeling against the Nabobs, and in favour of regulating the powers of the
company ; in India again he plays his part in the wide-spread system of
intrigue which Warren Hastings was called upon to face. But it was all
in vain. In the very year in which Wellesley completed his work, the
Dutch adventurer, who had been the trusted adviser of an Empress, and
had dreamed of an Austrian trade system stretching from Delagoa Bay
through India to distant China, died in obscurity and neglect.
C. S. S. HICHAM.
THE PLACE-NAMES OF NORTHUMBERLAND AND DURHAM. By Allen
Mawer, M.A., Joseph Cowen Professor of English in Armstrong
College, University of Durham. Pp. xxxviii, 272. 8vo. Cambridge:
University Press. 1920. 2os. net.
FOR some years explanation of the meanings of the place-names on the map
has been engaging the attention of some of the best of our English scholars.
Not that it is a new study : the old writers in distant ages loved to
interpret the vernacular names of places by giving them what they conceived
to be their Latin equivalents. Gateshead was explained by Bede as caput
caprae ; Wulfeswelle by Simeon of Durham asfons /«/>/', and so the custom
went on. Writers in modern centuries followed the prevailing usage,
though Leland in this respect is more reticent than Camden. At the same
period John Denton attempted an explanation, sometimes very fanciful, of
many of the place-names of Cumberland in his topographical survey of that
county. Etymology was a favourite recreation of some of the old anti-
quaries, as may be inferred from the table-talk at Monkbarns.
But the methods pursued in our time are more trustworthy than those
which have gone before. The study of English place-names, says Professor
Mawer, is steadily advancing in its methods and extent, and in his contri-
bution to the science the general principles laid down by Skeat, Wyld and
Moorman have been followed. The form of the name in the earlier
220 Mawer : Place-Names of Northumberland
centuries is always investigated as a preliminary to its possible etymology.
It cannot be too often urged that the history of the earliest forms in the
vernacular is of the greatest moment. Names were not given to places by
a syndicate of scholars : they were the natural outcome of folk-experience
and folk-speech. For this reason folk-etymology should not be neglected.
Though we have a high opinion of Professsor Mawer's industry and
success in the elucidation of the place-names of Northumberland and
Durham, we are not convinced that he has always discovered the right
key to unlock the difficulties of some of his names. Haltwhistle may be
taken as an example. In his researches he has carried back the form of
the name to Hautwisel in 1240, and he shows that it varies little in sub-
sequent centuries. In consequence, he regards the word as 'a hybrid
compound of O.Fr. haut, ' high,' and M.E. twisel, O.E. tzvis/a, l fork of a
river or road,' descriptive of the position of Haltwistle on steeply rising
ground between Haltwistle Burn and S. Tyne.' Had Mr. Mawer known
that an earlier form of the name, perhaps the earliest yet found, was
Hachetwisel, he would have hesitated to regard the first element as
French. It may be permissible to doubt that a name in use in Northum-
berland so early as about 1138 was likely to have had Norman influence
in its formation.
The net result of Professor Mawer's survey of the place-names of the
two counties is set out in his introduction, and it has some very striking
features. The Celtic element is alleged to be no stronger than in most
English counties, and a good deal weaker than in those on the Welsh
Border. The Anglian conquest was so complete that the .vast majority of
the names are of English origin. On the other hand, the evidence of
Scandinavian occupation is very weak, which is certainly surprising in view
of its preponderance on the opposite side of the island. The French
element, in our thinking, may be regarded as negligible. A name like
Bewley, for instance, is ecclesiastical all the world over, a corruption of
Bellus Locusy later, Beaulieu in French. Sometimes the traditional or
vernacular name of the place was discontinued to make way for the
monastic description of the situation.
The author of this book may be congratulated on his performance. It
is one of the best on the subject of place-name etymology that we have
seen. It cannot help but be welcomed by all philological students,
especially by those in the counties of which it treats. Northern anti-
quaries are not slow to appreciate good work. TAMES WILSON
BRITISH BEGINNINGS IN WESTERN INDIA, 1579-1657. An Account of
the Early Days of the British Factory of Su'rat. By H. G. Rawlinson,
M.A. Pp. viii, 158. 8vo. With 10 illustrations. Oxford : Claren-
don Press. 1920. i os. 6d.
IT is opportune that at this time Mr. Rawlinson's History of the British
Beginnings in Western India, 15/9-1657, should appear. The history of
British India begins, with most of us, with Lord Clive and Warren
Hastings. We had a vague idea that the record of the East India Com-
pany went further back than that period, but few of us realised that it went
Rawlinson : British in Western India 221
back to the spacious times of Great Elizabeth. The discovery of the New
World beyond the Atlantic heralded a period of amazing intellectual and
material development. Western Europe was all alive. Spain, Portugal,
France, Holland and, last in the race, England were all striving to gain a
footing in the great Eldorado of the West. Columbus had gone out to
find a way to Asia, and had stumbled unexpectedly on America, but India
was as interesting as of old, and so English adventurers, finding their way
there by the overland route, and getting permission from the Mogul
Emperor, set up their small warehouses in Surat, about 160 miles from
Bombay, planting themselves for the first time in that India, which in pro-
cess of time their successois, the East India Company, ruled and continued
to rule until in 1858 India became an Imperial Dominion.
It is a fascinating story of the early beginnings which Mr. Rawlinson
tells in the graphic narrative style of one who knows his subject thoroughly
and is in love with it. The book itself is well printed in good clear type,
and, illustrated as it is with engravings and outline maps, forms a mine of
useful information to those interested, as all of us ought to be, in the India
in which at the present moment our Imperial rule is passing through one of
the critical testing periods in its history. ANDREW LAW.
COLLECTED PAPERS : HISTORICAL, LITERARY, TRAVEL, AND MISCELLANEOUS.
By Sir Adolphus W. Ward, Litt.D., Master of Peterhouse. 2 vols.
Pp. xii, 408 ; pp. viii, 398. 8vo. Cambridge : University Press.
1921. 485.
IN these two volumes the Master of Peterhouse has made a selection of his
historical contributions to periodicals in the course of sixty years. Covering
as they do such widely different subjects as Roman manners under the earlier
Emperors, the Thirty Years' War, and Aims and Aspirations of European
Politics in the Nineteenth Century, it is impossible to do justice to the
erudition of the author.
Sir Adolphus has left the Papers as they originally appeared, and it is
unlikely that later research has found much to criticise in them ; while the
perfection of their style might well be taken as a model by most historical
writers of to-day. Appearing as they do in 1921 it is to be regretted that
the writer did not see his way to presenting an ampler postscript to the two
papers which open the first, and conclude the second, volume. ' The Peace
of Europe ' and c The New German Empire ' will at once attract the
attention of the reader distraught by the conflicting views of publicists on
the question of how that peace is to be attained and maintained, but it must
be admitted that from neither will he attain the guidance he looks for. In
the first of these articles, written in 1873, lt 's shown that, when all possible
allowance has been made for the beneficial effects of an International code,
administered by a permanent International tribunal, * only the dreamer will
conclude that the peace of Europe . . . will be assured by such means.' The
reason is obvious — none of these means remove or prevent 'the natural
combativiness of man, the spirit of conquest, illegitimate ambition, desire
for aggrandisment ' which are among, if indeed they are not the principal,
cause of war. If that was true in 1873 is it not equally so in 1921 ?
p
222 Ward : Collected Papers
In his closing paper on the New German Empire Sir Adolphus adds a
postscript. He refers to an article by Professor Hans Delbriick in the
Prcussische Jahrbiicher ascribing the blame for the agitation in favour of
war, the U boat campaign, and the policy of annexation, to the Militarist
Pan-Germanist tendency ; but, at the same time, charging the Social
Democratic party with * conjuring up the catastrophe in the very moment
when everything depended upon keeping Germany's last forces together—
the nation has followed false prophets ; but who is guilty, the false
prophets, or the nation that put faith in them ? ' Sir Adolphus answers the
question with a quotation, * Les peuples ne sont jamais coupables,' and
leaves it at that. Can the peoples, conscious of their own innocence, be
quite sure that their elected prophets will, in future, be as little * coupables '
as history shows them to have been in the past ? BRUCE SETON.
THE CITY OF GLASGOW : ITS ORIGIN, GROWTH, AND DEVELOPMENT.
With 8 Maps and 8 Plates. Pp. iv, 79. Royal 8vo. Edinburgh : The
Royal Scottish Geographical Society. 1921. 8s. 6d.
IN 1919 the Royal Scottish Geographical Society published an Account
of the City of Edinburgh, illustrated by a series of maps, plans, and old
views. They have now issued a similar book on Glasgow, though on a
somewhat different plan. It consists of a number of short articles, written
by different contributors, with a short editorial introduction. A compilation
of this sort has its drawbacks. There is of course a lack of continuity, and
a certain amount of over-lapping is unavoidable, as will be easily under-
stood when we find that three of the articles deal with ' The Rise of Trade
and Industry,' * The Port and its Development,' and * Overseas Relations.'
On the other hand it has enabled the Society to avail themselves of the
assistance of such authorities as Professor Gregory, Professor Bryce, Sir
John Lindsay, Dr. George Neilson, and Mr. D. M. M'Intyre, of the Clyde
Navigation Trust, whose co-operation could not well have been secured
otherwise.
The articles, being written by experts, are both interesting and informative,
while they afford ample food for reflection. The rise and progress of
Glasgow, which are described succinctly but adequately, are attributed
largely to the following causes : its Geographical position, the protection
and influence of the Church, the opportunities afforded by the Union of the
Crowns, and especially by the Union of the Countries in 1707. These,
however, only gave the opportunity, and it was owing to the character of
the people that they were able to avail themselves of these advantages, and
to adapt themselves to the chances and changes that from time to time
affected the commerce and industry of the place. We hope Professor Bryce,
who contributes an article on ' The People of Glasgow,' will not think us
frivolous if we say that it does not much matter whether the people of a city
are dolichocephalic or brachycephalic so long as they are sufficiently
hard-headed, and can avoid the malady of 'swelled head.' We hope, how-
ever, that the successors of the men to whose enterprise andexertions Glasgow
owes its present position will lay to heart the warning contained in Sir
Halford Mackinder's ' L'Envoi.' He there points out that our city owes its
The City of Glasgow 223
greatness * mainly to momentum from the past,' and that unless the workers
of to-day recognise this fact they may find that they cannot continue to
depend as at present on the * running organisation and world wide good will
which have come down to them from their predecessors.'
A feature of the book is the Maps by which it is illustrated. These are
described in the article on * The Cartography of Glasgow,' by Mr. J. Arthur
Brown, to which is appended a very useful chronological list of Maps of
Glasgow prior to the Geological Survey of 1857-62. A good map is often
worth half a volume of description, and the growth of Glasgow can be best
studied by an intelligent use of the maps. The improvement of the Clyde,
for instance, and the consequent development of the Port, can be under-
stood better by a comparison of the Map of 1920, which accompanies Mr.
M'Intyre's article, with the Maps of Timothy Pont, 1595, and John Watt,
1734, than by any amount of letterpress. -j\ jr DONALD.
HENRY VIII. AND THE ENGLISH MONASTERIES. By Cardinal Gasquet.
Seventh edition. Pp. xlviii, 495. With 3 Maps. 8vo. London :
G. Bell & Sons, Ltd. 1920. i6s. net.
THIS appears to be a reprint of the last edition of this well-known treatise,
with a new preface added. The author has made no attempt to deal with
the trenchant and detailed criticisms of Mr. G. G. Coulton, which are
collected in his Medieval Studies (ii. ed. London, 1915). The failure to
acknowledge errors in statement which Mr. Coulton has demonstrated, has
the unfortunate effect of rendering suspect a study of an important question
which has undoubted merits. The reader of the book in its present form
is bound to verify the facts for himself before accepting the Cardinal's
version. A candid admission of errors would not have been fatal to the
Cardinal's thesis, and would have given the book an historical value which
it cannot claim. DAVID BAIRD SMITH.
Sir Geoffrey Butler has written a Guide to an Exhibition of Historical
Authorities Illustrative of British History compiled from the Manuscripts of
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (8vo, pp. 16; Cambridge University
Press, 1920; price is.). It is drawn up for the convenience of visitors
only, but will gratify a wider 'audience' by its kindly and well-founded
enthusiasm over Archbishop Parker's splendid collection bequeathed to
Corpus Christi College in 1574. The contents of twenty-four items are
popularly sketched.
Among recent additions to the series of * Helps for Students of History *
is A Short Guide to some MSS. in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, by
Robert H. Murray (8vo, pp. 63 ; London : Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge ; 1920, price is. gd. net). It furnishes general accounts of
the glories of Trinity College Library, such as the noble and ancient Book
of Kells, Book of Mulling, Book of Durrow, and Book of Armagh, which
are the priceless and unique inheritance from Ireland's golden age of
culture. Other documents described include sixty-six volumes of original
record of the Inquisition at Rome (dealt with in a single confused paragraph,
224 Current Literature
very far from illuminating) and a series of depositions on the massacres and
atrocities during the Irish revolt of 1641. These depositions are sketched
by Dr. Murray with equal sympathy and critical insight. It is noted that
the library includes the original draft of Archbishop Spotiswoode's History.
From the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace we have
received Publication No. 17, entitled American Foreign Policy. (Pp.
viii, 128. 8vo. Washington, D.C. 1920.) An introduction by the
acting director, N. M. Butler, emphasises the need of the time for exact
information as to the principles of American administration. This by way
of preface to a collection of extracts, beginning with George Washington's
farewell address in 1796, including President Monroe's 'message' in 1823,
various papers on the Hague tribunal and the act of August 29, 1916,
declaring it to be the policy of the United States to settle international
disputes by mediation or arbitration, and authorising the President to
invite a conference for that end of * all the great Governments of the
world.' This last academic production was, of course, before events
determined the United States to come into the war.
Probably a long and possibly a great future lies before The Antiquaries'
Journal, * Being the Journal of the Society of Antiquaries of London,' of
which the first number has just been published by the Oxford University
Press. It is introduced to the world of archaeology by Sir Hercules Read,
President of the Society. The plan is an extension of the former system
of Proceedings, and the substituted periodical will contain all the matter of
the older form, besides not only an adequate record of general archaeological
discovery but also a review of current antiquarian literature. With this
expanded commission accordingly the new magazine enters the lists — a
royal octavo periodical of 80 pages, of which 57 are devoted to substantive
communications by the Fellows, and the remainder to notes, reviews and
obituaries. These initial contributions are worthy to mark the new
departure equally with authority, distinction and variety.
First comes an elaborate study by Mr. A. W. Clapham of the Latin
Monastic Buildings of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem,
with a large coloured plan of the church and priory as well as smaller
diagrammed de restauration. Second in place, though not second in impor-
tance, is an interim report on the Exploration of Stonehenge, by Lt.-Col.
W. Hawley, with a capital photographic plate of the whole stonecircle,
thirteen sectional drawings, and four photographic plates of the actual
processes adopted to readjust lintels and to straighten leaning upright stones
by means of jacks. The discussion at the close is luminous, and the full
significance of the investigation is brought out by the sketch-sections
registering with precision the findspots of pottery, glass, flint implements
and deerhorn picks. Evidently the Bronze Age, probably in its later
phases, will make considerable claim to the authorship of the giant circle,
but there will remain distinctions between the structure itself and the use
made of its enclosures for cremation burials, so that much will depend on
calculations of the lapse of time since first these imposing masses of stone
were set in their place of wonder and mystery on Salisbury Plain. Th
Current Literature 225
third paper brings us to a Scottish theme : it is Mr. A. C. Curie's brief but
lucid description of the discoveries at Traprain Law, with five illustrations
of the hoard of silver now so famous in the annals of Scottish archaeological
science. Essentially cognate to this is the next article by Mr. E. C. R.
Armstrong on the beautiful although imperfect Irish Shrine of Killua,
recently purchased by the Royal Irish Academy. It is made up of cast
bronze plates with settings of amber and is semicircular. Its interlaced
and spiral and zoomorphic ornamentation, the curious conventionalised
male figure and face in the design, and the looped handles for carriage or
suspension of the shrine have combined to sanction the provisional sugges-
tion of an eighth century date. As yet the saint in whose honour it was
made is unidentified, the place whence it originally came being unfor-
tunately unknown.
Reviews and annotations come from competent hands. Among them is
an informative notice of Prof. Tout's recent study of 'the Wardrobe' in the
administration of England, and there is an important anonymous comment
on a study by Hr. Lindqvist, calling in question Snorre Sturlason's dictum
circa 1240 regarding the order of succession of types in Scandinavian
funerals.
The new Journal makes a vigorous beginning, augury we hope of high
service to research on antiquities for this century and perhaps the next.
History for January is chiefly noticeable for Commandant Weil's article
on * Guizot and the Entente Cordiale,' which prints for the first time two
very elaborate and important letters exchanged in 1844 between Guizot,
then Minister of France, and the Comte de Flahaut, French ambassador at
Vienna. The relations between England and France had been dangerously
sensitive for some time, and the object of the correspondence was to bring
about a better understanding with Metternich, the great minister of Austria.
Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset contains in the number for
September an important note on the * Iron Grille over the grave of Mary
Queen of Scots.' Mr. James Cross gives a reference to The Times of 29th
July, 1920, recording the restoration to Westminster Abbey of the grille
which James I. had put over his mother's grave. It was bought in 1826
by John Bridge, and installed at his residence, the Manor House, Piddle-
trenthide, near Dorchester. Purchased by the National Art Collections
Fund, it has now been returned to its rightful place. To Mr. Cross's note
the Rev. C. H. Mayo, one of the two editors of the magazine under
notice, appends the following valuable corroborative extract :
' In the Catalogue of the Sale of the Collections of the late John Bridge
and John Gawler Bridge at Piddletrenthide, on 2Oth Sept., 1911, and the
two following days, the subjoined entry occurs in the second day's sale list,
p. 32, lot 357 : — * An interesting * Stuart ' relic, in the form of the wrought
iron railings, with scroll hanging for tomb lamp which formed the grave
surround of Mary Queen of Scots, and was removed from Peterborough
Cathedral, on the occasion of the body of Mary Queen of Scots being con-
veyed to Westminster Abbey by command of her son, James I.'
'This was purchased by Mr. John Bridge, July, 1826.'
226 Current Literature
Macmillan's Historical Atlas of Modern Europe. A Select Series of Maps,
illustrative of the recent history of the Chief European States and their
Dependencies, is an extremely useful collection of maps in colours, showing
mainly the political and ethnographical features of European countries
up to 1914, with a provisional Map of Europe after the Peace Treaty of
1919-20.
Professor Hearnshaw has written a full and careful introduction to each
of the maps ; the volume (London : Macmillan & Co., price 6s.) is one
which should be of great use to students and to all who are interested in
nineteenth century European History.
Dr. George Macdonald has written for the British Academy, F. Haverfield^
1860-1919, an admirably sympathetic and finely turned biographical notice
and critical estimate. The dimensions of Professor Haverfield have been
made much more perceptible by his death, which on many grounds was a
disaster to Roman studies in the United Kingdom. Dr. Macdonald pays
eloquent tribute not merely to the scholar but to the man.
In the Juridical Review (December) Mr. W. Roughead completes his
' familiar survey ' of Poisoning as revealed in the Justiciary records of
Scotland. One is glad to infer that the crime is not characteristic, and to
welcome Mr. Roughead's release for happier themes. Mr. W. G. M.
Dobie, writing on ' Law and Lawyers in the * Waverley Novels,' ' has
naturally no profound novelties for our entertainment, but by his many
citations he abundantly justifies the profession's rather overweening belief
that even wizards may owe much to the dark art and craft of the law.
Fraser's Scottish Annual^ 1920, presents in popular form varied articles
with a flavour thoroughly Scottish. A short sketch of Earl Haig of Bemer-
syde with illustrations is followed by 'The Kilt and Bagpipes.' R. L.
Stevenson's association with Burns through his great-grandfather, the Rev.
Dr. Smith of Galston, is the subject of the last paper. There are contri-
butions in verse, including <Tir Nam Bean: Toast,' by Principal Sir
Donald MacAlister.
The Iowa Journal for October devotes seventy pages to a full study and
statement by Jacob Van der Zee of the work of the Iowa Code Commis-
sion created by the State Legislature in 1919. It is a somewhat instructive
chapter of legal codification, being a record of discussion and drafting,
which closes with a 'Compiled Code,' fully indexed, and now awaiting
adoption, if fortune favours it, as the official code of the State in 1921.
The Caledonian (New York) for November reprints articles on 'Old
World St. Andrews ' and the ' House of Douglas.'
Notes and Communications
THE PASSAGES OF ST. MALACHY THROUGH SCOT-
LAND. Arising out of my notes on this subject (S.H.R. vol. xviii, 69-82),
I should like with your permission to add by way of supplement some new
impressions I have gained by correspondence with Professor Lawlor on
some obscure points in my narrative. Though my statements for the most
part have his approval, I have not always succeeded in convincing him.
The correspondence of course was private, but he has readily given me
leave to use it.
I am glad to find, touching St. Malachy's visit to Annan, that Dr.
Lawlor is inclined to agree with me ' that Malachy learned there some-
thing of the state of England which he had not known ; and that in con-
sequence (possibly by the advice of his host), he avoided the south, and
went to Guisborough in the hope that he might get a passage from that
district, with the help of the canons there, in spite of Stephen's tactics
regarding bishops.'
In my recital of Malachy's passage through Yorkshire (p. 81), I regret
that by a heedless statement my meaning is not so clear as it should be.
* You represent him,' writes Dr. Lawlor, ' to have made a detour, which
would seem to imply that he returned westward. But would not the
word divertit mean that he left the beaten track without any such implica-
tion ? Of course it would not indicate that he did not return to his
intended route : see § 37, p. 71.' My translation of divertit in the text is
so clumsy that it does not convey the impression the narrative gave me.
Though St. Bernard does not say so, I believe that from the outset York
was the objective on the second journey outward as well as on the first.
But after the Annan experience, instead of going direct to the metropolitan
city, Malachy turned aside after passing the gap of Stainmore that he
might visit the canons of Guisborough on the way. According to the map
given by J. R. Green (Making of England, ii. 128), which shows the direct
road from Carlisle to York, the divertit would naturally take place at
Catterick. If I rightly apprehend Dr. Lawlor's meaning that Malachy
went to Guisborough to avoid the King's officials at York or elsewhere, I
can raise no objection to the inference. The mouth of the Tees, in which
the canons had interests, could supply a sea passage as well as the Humber.
Another interesting remark by Dr. Lawlor may be mentioned. When
he said that { Malachy had a prosperous journey through Scotland ' (§ 40,
p. 76), he was using the Bollandist text which gives 'prospere Scociam
pervenit,' whereas the Benedictine text, on which I relied, has * prospere in
Scociam pervenit.' The textual discrepancy in my opinion is of no
228 St. Malachy in Scotland
consequence. A preposition after pervtnit, so far as I can find, is always
expressed or understood in classical as well as ecclesiastical prose. The
Vulgate of Acts xvj1 may be taken as an example of the latter usage. In
the Clementine text of that verse, ' pervenit Derben et Lystram — he came
to Derbe and Lystra,' the preposition in is omitted, but it has been
restored to its proper place by Wordsworth and White in their great
edition. It is precisely the same in the Bollandist and Benedictine texts of
the Vita S. Malachiae : the absence or presence of the preposition makes
no difference to the meaning of the passage. It is quite true that St.
Bernard wrote 'pervenit ad Viride Stagnum — he passed through (the
country) till he came to Viride Stagnum.' In like manner, I may use a
paraphrase of either the Bollandist or Benedictine text — ' he passed through
(the distance from Clairvaux) till he came to Scotland.' I may be rash in
saying so, but I still think that Carlisle is the inevitable identification of the
place where St. Malachy is alleged to have healed the prince of Scotland.
I may call attention here to a curious blunder on pp. 75-6 of my narra-
tive in twice using ' Downpatrick ' for * Portpatrick.' Fortunately the
substitution would be detected by the reader at once as a mental vagary,
caused by the similarity of the name-sounds, one being in Ireland and the
other in Galloway.
Dr. Lawlor furnishes me with authoritative evidence of the correct form
of Portus Lapasperi from which St. Malachy sailed to Ireland. ' By the
way,' he says, ' I deserve no credit for the conjecture of Lapasperi : it is in
three of the Bollandist MSS., and I think in my A and K. The fourth
MS. has Laspasperi. The three readings in MSS. would be Lapaspi,
Laspaspi, and Lapaspi — the two latter being very easy misreadings of the
first.' It may be explained that the MSS., which he designates A and
K, are in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, the former being a
cent, xiij text of the Vita S. Malachiae, and the latter a cent, xv text :
they have been so designated by him for the sake of reference in the list of
authorities prefixed to his book published by the S.P.C.K. One may
venture to express satisfaction that the true reading of this ancient Scottish
place-name has been so happily determined. TAMES WILSON.
ST. MALACHI IN SCOTLAND (S.H.R. xviii. p. 69). While
I do not venture either to criticise or endorse Dr. Lawlor's equation of
Portus Lapasperi with one of the places named Cairngarroch (not Cairn-
garrock as rendered by Canon Wilson) on the western seaboard of Wigtown-
shire, I cannot but think it probable that he prudently preferred to embark
for Ireland at one of them, rather than at Portyerrock. The proximity of
Cruggleton certainly favours Canon Wilson's interpretation ; and the fact
that the name is given as * Portcarryk ' in a MS. rental of Whithorn
Priory, 1550-1585, and ' Porterack' in the Inquisitiones ad Capellam^ 1647,
suggests analogy with the adjectival syllables in Cairngarroch.
On the other hand the configuration of the district weighs against Canon
Wilson's view. To reach the Irish coast from Portyerrock involves a long
voyage round the Burrow Head and the Mull of Galloway. Off each of
these headlands the tide races strongly, causing a nasty sea. Indeed, the
St. Malachy in Scotland 229
neck of the Mull still bears the name of Tarbet (tarruing bada, boat
draught), where boats were drawn across from sea to sea to avoid the rough
water round the headland.
Again, the parish church of Mochrum, bearing the only dedication to
St. Michael within the county of Wigtown, lies 9^ miles as the crow flies
W.N.W. of Cruggleton and Portyerrock, on the direct route for the
Cairngarrochs. It is hardly likely that Malachi would have travelled
thither and returned to embark at Portyerrock. ' There is no real evidence,'
says Canon Wilson, * that either of the three Cairngarrochs ' (I know of
only two) ' was ever a port of passage to Ireland or elsewhere, . . . there is
no good ground for attributing to early travellers a disinclination for sea
voyages, or a desire to cross the sea by the shortest passage.' I submit that
human stomachs were of much the same stability in the twelfth century as
they are in the twentieth, and that, then as now, a sail of twenty miles is
more attractive to the average landsman than one of fifty or sixty miles.
There can be no reasonable doubt that intercourse by sea was easy and
frequent between the west coast of Wigtownshire and Ulster. Twenty-five
miles of rock-bound coast between Corsewall light and the Mull of
Galloway lie in full sight of Ireland. The cliffs are seamed with numer-
ous inlets bearing names denoting their use as landing places — Portavaddie,
Slouchavaddie, the port and slochd or gully of the boats (bhada\ Portlong,
the ship (long) port, etc. It is to be noted that Portyerrock is no more than
an inlet in an iron-bound coast, no whit more commodious than those in
the neighbourhood of the hill called Cairngarroch.
Life-long acquaintance with every part of the coast of this county and the
seafaring habits of its people leads me to think it very probable that
Malachi would prefer riding thirty miles to Cairngarroch rather than beat
a long passage to Ireland round the two promontories. And if the visit to
St. Michael's of Mochrum be assumed, the case for Cairngarroch is
strengthened. HERBERT MAXWELL.
Monreith.
EARLY ORKNEY RENTALS IN SCOTS MONEY OR IN
STERLING (S.H.R. xviii. 99). Some years ago I expressed the opinion
in Old-Lore Miscellany^ viii. 56, and more fully in the Orkney Herald^ that
the money in Peterkin's Rentals^ No. I, 1502, and in Orkney and Shetland
* payment' was sterling, because (i) an instance had been found in the
Rental in which the * price' of malt amounted to four times its rental value
or Orkney * payment ' ; (2) the Orkney < payment ' price of produce was
less than a quarter of that of similar produce in Scotland ; and (3) the ratio
of sterling to Scots money was 3.5 : I in 1500 (the English Tower pound of
350 grammes was coined into £1 175. 6d., and the Scots troy pound of 374
grammes was coined into £7). It dawned upon me afterwards that, as the
normal rent of a mark of land in Orkney and Shetland is idd. * payment/
it followed that the purchase price must be twenty-four times that amount,
viz. 24od., the Norse mark. This is supported by the fact that the uniform
tithe charge in Shetland is 2d. per mark, or one-fifth of the rent. This
rule still holds good in Scotland in the valuation of tithe, viz. the actual rent
230 Early Orkney Rentals in Scots Money
is assumed to be a half of the produce, so that one-fifth of the rent is equal to
one-tenth of the produce. But the most important proof is the fact that, in
1500, one Norse penny of 240 to the mark of 216 grammes was equivalent to
one depreciated sterling penny or 4 depreciated Scots pennies.1 Unfor-
tunately the old tithe charge of Orkney has not been preserved, but I have
found sufficient evidence to shew that tithe had also been charged in
Orkney at 2d. per mark.
Orkney and Shetland produce was appraised in Norse pennies of 240 to
the weighed mark of pure silver. The meil of malt in Orkney and Shet-
land was valued at 6d. Orkney and Shetland * payment ' or ' gild,' shewing
the antiquity and common origin of the appraisement. In the beginning
of the 1 5th century, Norse weighed and Scots depreciated pennies were
about equal in weight, and possibly forcop, a money payment, was paid in
Scots money from that time. At any rate, in 1 500 and after, forcop was
paid in Scots money.
By 1595 Orkney 'payment' in money had been converted into Scots
in the following manner, e.g., in the case of Foubister, St. Andrews. 1502
Rental : 'Butter-scat I span (2od.) . . . inde stent I leispund ( = 4d., leaving
a balance of l6d. of butter-scat, which is entered in the summation as
4 butter-scat prefer the stent ') . . . malt-scat 2 meils . . . forcop yd.'
1595 Rental : 'Butter-scat I lispund, in scat-silver 35. 3d. ( = the balance
of the butter-scat in 1502, viz. lod. X2 = 32d. + 7d. forcop = 35. 3d.)
.. . . scat-malt 2 meils.'
So that between 1502 and 1505, one item of Orkney 'payment' had
been commuted into Scots money at only double its face value. In the
above entry the span of butter has been priced at 2od. instead of the correct
2id. Where forcop has been carried over by itself from 1502 to 1595, it is
of the original amount and in Scots money.
Captain Thomas read the d. in ' 2id. span of butter ' as mark, although d.,
.denarius, is used throughout for penny, and mk and merk for mark ; and he
took ' butter-scat inde stent butter ' to mean that ' stent butter ' was an
additional tax to butter-scat, whereas inde is used throughout to indicate
the medium of payment. Butter-scat had to be paid partly in kind (butter)
and the remainder in any appraised produce of the same value ; the
remainder is entered in the summations as ' butter-scat prefer the stent,'
and this Thomas took to be the total value of the butter-scat. Fortunately
the weight of the Orkney and Shetland span is known to be equal to 3^
Norse spans or 1 26 marks. The value of the span of butter was 2 1 d., and of
the Orkney lispund 4d., so that the latter would weigh 24 marks or -^ span ;
and therefore originally it was probably a bismar-pund of 24 marks, and not a
lispund of 32 marks. In 1500 20 lispunds= I barrel of butter, which is sug-
gestive of the Danish skippund of 20 lispunds of 32 marks or 16 Ibs. each.
Captain Thomas explains the IOI contiguous meilis-coppis and uris-coppis
in Westrey, extending to i6f pennylands or approximately 113 acres, as
being ' cuppes ' or ' old quarries.' Whereas coppis, singular cop, is O.N.
Kaup as in forcop ; and 6 meils, or 6 uris, per pennyland, represent the scat
1 The exact ratio of value is 4-047 Norse : 3-5 stg. : I Scots, of which the
'equivalents are i Norse = 1-156 stg. = 4-047 Scots.
Early Orkney Rentals in Scots Money 231
which, it is declared, should have been paid in 1502, and which was paid
in 1595. In 1347 6 Norse aurar of depreciated coins were equal to 3&d.
Orkney payment, when the ratio of weighed to counted was 5:1. This
payment, or its equivalent in Norse coins must, therefore, be dated from 1347
or after.
At last I have succeeded in ascertaining the whole of the eyrislands
in Shetland, on the basis of the record of the actual scat of three of them.
There are about 232 eyrislands in Shetland as compared with a possible
20 1 in Orkney, allowing approximate amounts for places like Edey and
Cava of which the record is unknown. In Shetland, while many are
valued at 72 marks, corresponding with the normal eyrisland in Orkney,
the average value is 58 marks.
The rent of a normal eyrisland of 72 marks was 3 marks, and the Old
Extent of a Scottish ploughland or hide was also 3 marks — the normal
eyrisland and ploughland contained I2O acres each, and the similar rent in
both cases may be more than a coincidence. Old Extent can be traced
back to the same time as the mark valuation was made, viz. 1137.
In Shetland they grouped their marks of land into blocks of 72, each of
which was called ' a piece of corn-teind,' and corresponded with the
normal eyrisland in Orkney and the normal ploughland of 3 marks, or 405.
,and, in Scotland. A w JOHNSTON.
EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY INDENTURE OF
APPRENTICESHIP IN THE DYEING TRADE AT HAD-
DINGTON. The Indenture of which a transcript follows is in . itself
evidence that the Union of 1707 and the Acts of the Scottish Parlia-
ment in 1703 and 1704 in favour of the export of wool, although a very
serious blow to native manufacture, had not killed Haddington industry.
Dyeing had been long established in the town and neighbourhood. The
New Mills Cloth Manufactory was started in 1681, and thirty years earlier
a similar industry was in existence. Professor Scott's valuable introduction
to The Records of the Scottish Cloth Manufactory at New Mills contains
much information not only on the spinning and weaving, but also the
dyeing of wool, woollen yarn and cloth.
The Indenture provides for an apprenticeship for five years, the fee
payable by the father, Thomas Burnet, being £60 Scots or £5 sterling.
The master, Patrick Begbie, dyer, burgess of Haddington, is bound to
< teach learn and instruct ' the apprentice, James Burnet, l in the haill heads
points passadges and circumstances of his said trad and occupation of
litster.' There is careful provision against breaches of moral conduct on
the part of the apprentice, who was to be an inmate apparently of the
master's house during the term of his apprenticeship. TOHN EDWARDS.
THIR Indentors1 maid at Hadingtoun the twentie third day of May
Jm vij cl and tuelve years It is apointed agried and finally Indented
betuixt Patrick Begbie litster burges of Hadingtoun on the on pairt and
1 Indenture, dated 3rd May, 1712. It is the property of Mr. John R. W.
Burnet, advocate, Edinburgh, by whose permission this transcript appears.
232 Early Eighteenth Century Indenture
James Burnet third lawfull son to Thomas Burnet tenent in balgon l with
advice and consent of the sd Thomas Burnet and taken burden in and upon
him for his sd son on the other pairt That is to say the sd James Burnet
hes become and be thir prffs with consent forsd becomes prentice and
servant for all the dayes space and years of five years to be outroun nixt
and immediatly follouing his entry therto qch is heirby declared to be
and begin upon the day and dait of thir pnts, And from thencefurth and
therafter shall continue remain with and be faithfull trew good leal thankfull
and diligent prentice and servant to the sd Patrick Begbie, and shall wait upon
his master's service bath holy day and work day during the space forsd, and
shall give his exact dilligence and travell to learn the sd trad and occupation
to be teached to him and that he shall not hear nor conceall his sd masters
hurt skeith nor prejudice but shall tymously reveall it and stop the samen
to the outermost of his pouer and the sd Thomas Burnet becomes cautr
for the sd James Burnet his son his lauteth and remaining with his sd master
and that he shall nowayes during that tyme depairt from nor leave his sd
masters service without his speall licence had and obtained therto, Whilk if
he do in the contraire In that caice efter the expyring of his sd prentice-
ship the sd prentice shall remain with and serve his sd master two dayes for
ilk dayes absence And farder the sd James Burnet and Thomas Burnet his
sd father obleadgs them conly and seally that the sd James Burnet shall not
at ony tyme during his prenticeship defyle nor abuse his bodie in furnication
nor Adultery with any person nor persons qtsomever nather be anywayes
ane carder dycer drinker nor night waker nor haunt nor bear company
with any such vitious persons And the sd Thomas Burnet binds and
obleadgs him his airs, successors to him and intrometters with his goods
and gear qtsomever To content pay and delyver to the sd Patrick Begbie
his airs exers or assignees in name of prenticefee with his sd son all and
haill the soume of threescore of ponds Scots money And that AgeM:he
feast and terme of mertinmes nixt to come with ten ponds money forsds of
liquidat expenses in caice of faillizie and £ents (consequents) of the sd prnll
some efter the terme of pay1 above written durng the not pay* therof, For
the Ilks causes the sd Patrick Begbie obleadgs him his airs and successors that
he shall teach learn and instruct the sd James Burnet prentice in the haill
heads points passadges and circumstances of his sd trad and occupation of
litster qlk he presently uses or shall happen be his mozian or engyne 2 to
attain to during the space forsd and shall not hyd nor conceall from him
any pairt or point therof, but shall use his exact dilligence and travell to
cause the sd prentice learne and conceave the samen and shall entertain
sustain and mentain his sd prentice honestly in meat drink bedding work
and labour during the years abovspeit And the sd Thomas Burnet
obleadgs him and his forsds to furnish his sd son clathes and others necessar
to his body the haill tyme of his prenticeship, and both parties binds and
1 ' Balgon, Sir George Suton in North Berwick ' (Macfarlanis Geograph. Col-
lections, iii. 114). Sir James Suttie, Bart., of Balgone, County Haddington,,
married 1715 Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Hugh Dalrymple, Bart., of North
Berwick (Scots Peerage, viii. 142).
2 Mozian, means, resources. Engyne, ingenuity, scientific knowledge.
Early Eighteenth Century Indenture 233
obleadgs them to perform the premisses ilk ane to others and the party
faillizier to pay to the party observer the some of twenty ponds money
forsd for ilk faillize in the premisses by and attour the fulfilling yrof wher
ther is not ane alreadie modifed penalty And for the more security bath
parties consents to the regretion heirof in the books of counsell and session
or any other judges books competent within this Kingdom to have the
strenth of ane decreit interponed heirto, that lers of horining on ane charge
of six dayes only and other Exiolls neidfull may pass heiron, And for that
effect Constituts
Ther Prors, In witnes qrof written be William Shiel notar at Hadingtoun
both the sd parties have sub* thir pnts with ther hands place day moneth,
and year of God above wrn befor thes witnesses William Houden School-
master in Bouhouses and the sd William Shiel writter heirof and Andrew
and George Yowlls tennents in Haltfentoun
Pat Begbie
James Burnet
Thomas Burnet
Wm Shiel witnes Androu Yule witnes
Geo: Yool witnes
Wm Houden witnejs
THE ENTICEMENT OF SCOTTISH ARTIFICERS TO
RUSSIA AND DENMARK IN 1784 AND 1786. The following
notes have been made from documents in the Public Record Office in
London : 1
The first is in the form of a letter from Mr. Alleyne Fitzherbert, of the
British Embassy at St. Petersburg, to Lord Carmarthen, dated 8th June,
1784, and expresses his regret at having to record the recent arrival of ships
from Leith carrying a considerable number of stonemasons, bricklayers and
other artificers, all from Edinburgh and district, who had been sent for by a
Mr. Cameron, a British architect in the employ of the Empress Catherine,
to complete some extensive buildings at Tsarkoezelo, her residence outside
St. Petersburg. Many of these men brought their wives and families, the
whole party numbering 140 persons, and employed for the most part on a
yearly engagement. The diplomat hopes that at the expiry of this term
these useful artificers will return home to Scotland, and thus not be lost to
their own country.
The letter concludes with the request that Lord Carmarthen will take
steps to prevent further traffic in artificers from Great Britain, and expresses
surprise that the magistrates of Edinburgh should allow these men to
depart, not stealthily but publicly, in response to public advertisements in
defiance of recent laws passed to prevent emigration of manufacturers.
Mr. Fitzherbert wrote another letter to Lord Carmarthen on i6th
June, 1786, informing him of the arrival at Cronstadt of an English-
man, one Gascoyne, a former principal member of the Carron Company
of Ironworkers, who had been engaged at a high salary to erect a foundry
1H.O. 32/1. (Correspondence to the Home Office from the Foreign Office.)
234 Enticement of Scottish Artificers to Russia
for making cannon for the Russian navy, and had brought over with him
an assortment of all the principal machines in use at the Carron Works,
and, of still greater importance, he had seduced from these works a con-
siderable number of skilful artificers, some of whom had already arrived in
Russia and others were due to embark at Leith. Gascoyne had announced
that he had come to Russia with the approbation of His Majesty's
Ministers.
The document relating to Scotsmen in Denmark is in the form of a
letter from Mr. John Mitchell, dated from Copenhagen, I2th December,
1786, and announces that a certain Scotsman and noted smuggler, one
William Moir, had sailed from Copenhagen on that day for Great Britain
with a commission from the Danish Government to engage a number of
able hands from the hardware, plated ware, cotton and woollen manufac-
tures of England and Scotland, and to provide a sufficient quantity of
machinery and utensils for establishing branches of those trades in
Denmark. If successful in his errand, Moir was promised a reward of
^6000 sterling. An Irishman, Hamilton Moor, had embarked a few days
earlier for Dublin, presumably on a similar errand. He returned from
Ireland in July, 1787,* accompanied by five millwrights.
Many attempts were made to entice artificers from England and Scot-
land at this time. For example, a Prussian subject, Frederick Baden, was
imprisoned and fined £500 for enticing artificers to leave the kingdom
in 1785.2
A young lieutenant in the Danish navy, named Kaas, aged 24 and 6 ft.
high, was sent to Hull in 1787 to engage instructors in the art of making
steel, an art which is said to have been unknown in Denmark and Norway
at that time.3 E> ALFRED JONES.
THE DALKEITH PORTRAIT OF MARY QUEEN OF
SCOTS (S.H.R. xviii. 32, 152). Being in Rome and having with me only
some rough notes on the subject of Queen Mary's Portrait, I can only
reply shortly to Mr. Seton's letter.
To begin with a small point. Mr. Seton states that in Mr. Gust's
book on the pictures of the Queen 'No portrait appears to show a cross,
but most show a crucifix.' But in Mr. Foster's great work on the same
subject one finds several portraits of Mary wearing a cross, both in miniatures
and also in the large pictures. Among the latter are the Ailsa portrait, that
at Trinity House, Leith, and the Buchan-Hepburn portrait — the cross in the
last being of a curious and rare shape. It is true that in the portraits of
Mary in later life and as a prisoner in England, she generally is pictured
with a crucifix.
The cross of seven diamonds which I suggested as possibly the same as
the cross in the Dalkeith Portrait, only altered later by the addition of
rubies and a pendant pearl, was not given back with the carcan to the
1 Mitchell's letter of zoth July, 1787.
2 Public Record Office : H.O. 32/1 ; letter dated 7th March, 1787.
loth July, 1787.
Dalkeith Portrait of Mary Queen of Scots 235
Crown of France. It was not part of the French Crown Jewels, as can be
seen by the Inventories of the Queen's Jewels, later, in Scotland, where
there is a note of the pearl being added from some loose ones in Mary's
possession. It was a cross of nine diamonds, as I pointed out, which was
returned to France.
With regard to Mr. Seton's statement that the ruff was of a date not
earlier than 1576, it has been carefully compared with that worn by Mary
as Dauphine, in the sketch attributed to Clouet about 1559, and it is almost
identical ; and the Clouet sketch is admitted to be a contemporary and
authentic portrait. It is also very similar to that worn by her immediate
successor, the wife of Charles the Ninth of France.
Mr. Seton dismisses in a couple of lines what I regard as the most im-
portant piece of evidence, namely the carcan of table diamonds and entredeux
of pearls set in clusters of five. Yet he does not explain how someone, not
the Queen Consort of France, was painted wearing a necklace of such value,
identical with that (described with such care in the Queen's Inventories)
which belonged to, and had been given back to, the Crown of France before
Mary returned to Scotland in 1561.
The carcan as I pointed out agrees in every particular with the description
in the Inventories, and it is on this very important piece of evidence that I
state that the Dalkeith Portrait must have been painted before Mary left
France in 1661 or copied from an original of that date. No private person
could have been painted wearing a portion of the French Crown Jewels — a
set of such magnificence that it was valued at something like 800,000
crowns — and Mary herself had only a very brief period, as Queen Consort,
when she had the power to wear it.
With regard to likeness that, like beauty, is very much * in the eye of
the beholder,' but with regard to the age of the person in the portrait, one
has to remember that Mary dressed in rich robes and wearing the splendid
crown jewels would naturally look older than the girl-dauphine of 1559.
As for the pedigree of the picture it is at least as good as that of many of
the portraits accepted as authentic, or quasi-authentic.
It has been the fate of Mary Queen of Scots, that living or dead, every
subject connected with her should have been a source of controversy, and
the Dalkeith Portrait cannot be expected to be an exception to the rule.
MARIA STEUART.
BY the Editor's courtesy I have seen Miss Steuart's reply. I do not feel
able to modify my view that the Dalkeith portrait is not genuine. It is
dangerous for a mere man to argue with ladies about the date of rufis ; but
I fail to understand how any one can put the Dalkeith ruff and the Clouet
one side by side and then say they are * almost identical.'
WALTER SETON.
MANDATE TO THE BURGH COMMISSARIES OF KING-
HORN FOR PARLIAMENT IN 1 475. One of the earliest documents
preserved among the Supplementary Parliamentary Papers at the Register
house (vol. i. no.2) is the following mandate to commissioners of the burgh
of Kinghorn for a Parliament in the spring of 1475-6. The writ is badly
236 Mandate to Burgh Commissaries of Kinghorn
mutilated ; but enough is left to be an important addition to the Reliquiae
P arliamentariae in the first volume of the Acts (p. 102). We have trans-
cribed as much as can be read with any certainty, without attempting to fill
up gaps by comparison with other forms of procuratory.
Omnibus ad quorum noticias presentes . . . Salutem. Sciatis nos unanimi
consilio et consensu . . . habito comburgen . . . Johannem de Balglali et
Andream Quhitbrow . . . nostros deputatos commissarios ac nuncios speciales
coniunctim ad comparendum [pro nobis et] nomine nostro ad parliamentum
domini nostri regis coram eo vel deputatis suis pluribus vel uno . . .
[inc]hoandum et tenendum videlicet die lune ximo die mensis marcii proximo
futuro cum continuacione [dierum subjsequencium : dantes et concedentes
. . . procuratoribus nostris et commissariis commissionem nostram . . .
[gjeneralem et specialem ac mandatum generale et speciale comparendi seu
conveniendi pro [nobis] . . .et loco cum continuacione dierum ut premittiturur
subsequencium ac consulendi . . . d[eliberan]di concordandi et determinandi
una cum aliis communitatibus regni . . . negotiis domini nostri regis et regni
in dicto parliamento . . . determinandis ac perficiendis omnia alia et singula
que . . . [auctori]tate communi domini nostri regis et regnirfacere potuerimus
si presencia . . . gratum et firmum pro perpetuo habituri quicquid per
procurator es . . . coniunctim nomine nostro et ex parte tractatum concordatum
et determinatum . . . quolibet premissorum. In cujus rei testimonium
sigillum commune nostri burgi . . . est appensum apud Kyngorn in tolloneo
nostro tertio die mensis marcii anno domini millesimo [quadringentesimo]
LXXV°.
A. B. CALDERWOOD.
R. K. HANNAY.
MACBETH, MACHETH (S.H.R. xvii. 155, 378, xviii. 154, 155).
Although Macbeth and Macheth have been shewn to be English variants of
the Gaelic name McBheatha, there is not a single instance (excluding the
faked name Beth of 1120-24) °f a Gaelic name Beatha in Scottish or Irish
documents. There are, however, a multitude of instances of the Gaelic and
Irish name Aoidh, in the form Aedh of which the name of earl Heth, Ed or
Head is obviously the English form. If Angus McHeth was a son of earl
Heth or Ed (Gaelic Aoidh) it is reasonable to believe that the name
MacHeth, in his case, is the Gaelic patronymic MacAoidh, which is also
found in an aspirated form in Irish, e.g. in O', and Ua hAeadh, and so
possibly a Gaelic form Mac hAoidh^ i.e.'Mackay.
A. W. JOHNSTON.
Scottish Historical Review
VOL. XVIII., No. 72. JULY, 1921.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Mr. Robert Kirk's Note-Book. By David Baird Smith,
LL.D. - 237
The Appin Murder, 1752 : Cost of the Execution. By
W. B. Blaikie, DL.D. - - 249
A Seventeenth Century Deal in Corn. By Sir Bruce
Seton, Bt. of Abercorn - - 253
The Earl of Arran and Queen Mary. By Professor R. K.
Hannay - 258
An Old Scottish Handicraft Industry in the North of
Scotland. By Isabel F. Grant - 277
REVIEWS OF BOOKS
The Poetical Works of Sir Wm. Alexander, Earl of Stirling. By Sheriff A. S. D.
Thomson - 290
Pollard's The Evolution of Parliament. By Professor W. S. McKechnie - 291
Hamilton's The Irish Rebellion of 1 64 1. By J. W. Williams - - 293
The Annual Register : A Review of Public Events at Home and Abroad for
the Tear 1920. By Geo. Neilson, LL.D. - - 296
Clapham's The Economic Development of France and Germany, 1815-1914.
By Andrew Law - - 296
Forbes' The Founding of a Northern University. By Professor John Rawson
Elder - - 298
Orpen's Ireland under the Normans, 1216-1333. By Professor W. S.
McKechnie - - 298
Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. By Geo. Neilson, LL.D.
With ten illustrations - 299
British Academy Records of the Social and Economic History of England and
Wales. By Professor W. R. Scott - 301
Fornv'dnnen Meddelanden fran K. Vitterhtts Historieoch Antikv itets Akademien.
By James Curie _____ 302
Mackinnon's Social and Industrial History of Scotland. By W. G. .Scott
MoncriefF . - 303
Donaldson's Wanderings in the Westtrn Highlands and Islands. By Sheriff
S. M. Penney - _____ 305
Russell's The Tradition of the Roman Empire. By W. L. Renwick - - 306
Foster's The English Factories in India, 1555-1660. By Prof. W. R. Scott 307
David's Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy - - 308
Roberts' Historic Geography of the British Dependencies - - 308
Kinnear's Kincardine shire - - _ 309
Continued on next page
Contents
Reviews of Books — Continued. PAGE
Firth's Modern History in Oxford, 1841-1918 - 309
Adamnani Vita 5. Columbac - 309
Scott's Men and Thought in Modern History - -310
Winstanley's Hamlet and the Scottish Succession - 310
Current Literature -- " f* ~3H
Notes and Communications :
Local War Records - -319
St. Malachy in Scotland. By Sir Herbert Maxwell - 319
Archbishop Spottiswoode's History. By D. Hay Fleming - - 320
Scottish Church History Society - 320
Scottish Biblical Inscriptions in France. By A. W. Johnston - - 320
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LONDON AND NEW YORK : MACMILLAN AND CO. LTD.
The SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL
HISTORY OF SCOTLAND
From the Union to the Present Time
By JAMES MACKINNON, M.A., Ph.D., D.D.
Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Edinburgh, formerly Lecturer in
History, University of St. Andrews, and Queen Margaret College, University of Glasgow.
8vo. 16s. net.
THIS work is a review of the Social and Industrial History of Scotland
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It is intended to elucidate a department of Scottish History which
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history as far as Scotland is concerned.
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and industry, and the social life and advance of the eighteenth
century, the work contains a more detailed treatment, in Part II.,
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municipal enterprise, and social conditions.
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The
Scottish Historical Review
VOL. XVIIL, No. 72 JULY, 1921
Mr. Robert Kirk's Note-book
HTVHE MS. from which the following passages are extracted,
JL is a small volume (5^ inches by 2§ by ij), bound in
vellum, beautifully coloured by use and age, and furnished
with a flap which retains a piece of one of its cords. It
contains 1 8 8 pages covered on both sides with closely-written,
delicate writing. Some leaves have been torn from the end.
The first page is inscribed : First Manuscript \ A \ miscelany of
occuring [ thoughts on various \ occasions \ Ro : Kirk \ Love and live \
August i. at Balquhidder \ 1678. The inside of the flap bears
the signatures of * C. Kirk,' probably the writer's son Colin
Kirk, W.S., and of ' Thomas Rutherford, 1698.' The volume
bears evidence of being one of a series which probably included
the * little manuscript belonging to Coline Kirk ' referred to by
the transcriber of the Secret Commonwealth (if it be not the
* little manuscript ' itself).1 It was purchased by the writer
of this note in a bundle of miscellaneous MSS. at a recent sale
in London of part of the library of the late Professor John
Ferguson, LL.D., of Glasgow University.
The writer of this Miscelany was clearly Mr. Robert Kirk,
the author of The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and
Fairies, who was minister of Balquidder and afterwards of
Aberfoyle, and departed this life in 1692, to become, according
to popular tradition, the ' Chaplain to the Fairy Queen.'
1 D.N.B., s.v. and Andrew Lang's edition of the Secret Commonwealth. London :
David Nutt, 1893.
S.H.R. VOL. XVIII. Q
238 David Baird Smith
The expectation of discovering a work of the character of The
Secret Commonwealth vanished under the transcribing hand, but
in its place there was disclosed an interesting picture of the mind
of a worthy Scottish pastor of the school of Leighton. The
Note-book, however, offers sufficient internal evidence to identify
the writer with the author of that curious tractate. The following
passage has Kirk's peculiar quality of grave reflection stumbling
in an obscure field of observation.
The ancient tradition of evil spirits sucking of witches and dead carcasses
(raising a storm while a magician's dead body is unburnt) as being together
with darkness their proper element they are chained to (Jud. 6) and they
smelling from the cold north a carcass meet for them as a raven doth a
carrion afar off; those spiritual serpents triumphing over and feeding on
that dust) also their magical treats and sips of sweet liquor ; and the fame
of their being fed with dews and savoury exhalations and incense (being
mostly in the air intercepting souls' passage to heaven, which makes them
need the conduct of angels to Abraham's bosom) lykewise the story of the
human-shaped incubi^ and stealing of children and nurses, give probable sur-
mises that there are divers clans and kynds of spirits who make their
vehicles seen to us when they please, though they are not so gross as
terrestrial bodies, but most part aerial needing to be soakt and fed some way
as well as ourselves. Such may be the fauns, fayries, satyrs and haunters of
woods, hillocks, wells, etc. (for no thing nor place but is inhabited within
of some creatures) and since many of these disappear at mentioning the
name of God, and that they forsee evil rather than good, why may they not
have a polity among themselves, some of them not so miserable as others,
some of them reasoning and learning, others as yet obstinate, blinded
atheists (for they but see the works of God to prove a duty as we do ; yet
are there atheists among us).
A further point of identification is found in the ' Irish
passages which the Note-book contains, and in a number of
sympathetic references to the ' Scots-Irish.' The former are
in some cases in old Irish script, and include a version of one of
Kirk's elegies on the death of his first wife. It will be re-
membered that Kirk produced the first complete translation of
the Scottish Metrical Psalms into Gaelic in 1684, and had a
hand in a similar enterprise six years later.
4 It is often and much wished,' writes Kirk,
It is often and much wished that for benefit of the Scotch-Irish that
ancient law of England were in use, and that any thief or other malefactor
were pardoned the first crime, providing he could read the bibl ; for once
coming to holy knowledge they would indeed surcease that base trade of
life, which now among many tribes is scarce counted a sin or reproach, but
a worthy martial and politic act. For bordering enemies to invade other so,
Mr. Robert Kirk's Note- book 239
is no wonder ; but to bordering neebours, men of the same language and
extract, 'tis barbarous ; mars all traffic and converse, as wel as religion,
being a kind of secret civil war and unmanly treachery ; worse than the
savageness of beasts who prey not on their own kind. Want of sound
knowledge is much of the cause of this, which in time would root out the
evil habit, which (as in any other sin) kills the sense of its vileness.
The years during which the oblong leaves of the Note-book
were carefully filled were full of events of national importance,
but it only contains one reference to them. The following
account of the Battle of Bothwell Bridge has the value of con-
temporary hearsay :
On Sunday, June 22, 1679, the Southern Army of about 6000
Nonconformists or dissatisfied persons, led by one Hamilton, a gentleman
and Mr Jo. Welsh, a minister, were betwixt Bothwell Brigg and Hamilton
utterly discomfited (and about IOOO killed and taken). They taking flight
after a few sore cann shot sent among them, leaving their own cannon and
provision without tarrying to encounter with swords. They refused' liberal
conditions of peace, and to give or take quarter that morning. Their word
notwithstanding was * Kill and Take.' The King's Army's word was
1 Heth.' These valiant shadowes and deceived rout, full of godly words
but damnabl works, began their diabolic insurrection with the intended
murther of Major Johnston at Edinburgh, and horrid assasination of Arch-
bishop Sharp (who suppose an ill man got no fair justice or assize from
them) continued it with cruelty at Rugland, giving no mercy to any of the
King's troop when they once had the upper hand of them, and rifling the
graves of the dead at Glasgow shewing their valorous feats of arms and
singular dexterity in anatomy by slashing and carving of the dead corps (an
inhumanity unheard of among infidels). These be the effects of their
exalted Religion ; this their manhood in Battel ; and so vile an end would
the just God bring on so abominabl a beginning ; what began with
desperate rashness and want of head or wit ; ended with shame and want
of heart and hand. Such a bolt and attempt as this was in the year 1667
and was then quell'd by General Daliell, as this under the conduct of the
Duke of Monmouth. Our reflection hereon, is, that the Kingdom loses,
whoever had gain'd the day : Therfor in civil and intestin Debates our
sorrow should be doubled for the common vices that occasion such strokes ;
wherein all of us have our own blame. And withal we are to pity such
poor people that are deluded and hoodwinked by their vagrant corrupt
teachers, to the disgrace of their nation and profession for ever, to the loss
of their estates and lives and great hazard of their souls (dying in so blood-
thirsty a temper).
In March of the same year, Robert Kirk's mother died, and
he records the event in the following characteristic fashion :
Though I use not to notice dreams much, yet March 25, 1679, I viyels
perceived and thought I felt a great tooth in my head break into two halves
240 David Baird Smith
part by part and com off; on the morrow (my father being removed twenty
years before) my mother took bed and on Monday thereafter about 2 a
clock, gave up the ghost. Who knows if some courteous angel gives us a
warning by our imaginations or senses, of extraordinary accidents. I am
sure at several slips, I have susteand immediately loss of goods or hurts of
my body, or vexing reports of fama. Though God does observe and may
manage every particular in this world by himself; yet he may use the
medial ministry of angels toward men, as of man toward beasts.
Ignorant worldly men will boast of their kyndly calf-country and so.
To do good specially to that place we breathed our first air into, we should
take any argument to urge us ; but t'is as absurd so to stick be it, as to
imagine of no permanent resting but in it, as becaus t'is kindly for a man
to go to Hell if he follow his predecessors. Therfor he himself is not to
labour for heaven (our true home and lasting country).
The death of his wife is recorded in pedestrian verse :
Elegie on Isabel Campbel, sometime spouse to Mr Robert Kirk, minister
of the- Gospel at Balquidder, who departed December 25, 1680. Was
married to her husband near 3 years, and left alive one son, Colin.
You winged choristers, appear,
Chirp notes of grief in every ear.
You sable-tribe, whose horrid groans,
Would wrench salt tear from marbl stons,
You fonts, you monts, whose wandering crew's
Resound sad echoes to sad news.
You, all that's female, scour your throats,
Bewail this bride who left your cotes ;
Whose Heart's chast flames were such that shee
Chang'd husbands, one for one most High,
She scorns the cut, the curt, the cringe,
(Rare soul, that movd not on such hinge).
Her ornament was loyal duty ;
In soul, not boxes was her beauty.
Her innocence and honestie
Brought Paradyse before our ey,
She beamd with brightness all her life,
Now let her rest, away with strife.
Two that's made one whilst they have breath
No wise man parts l them at their death.
An epitaph on the same.
One piece of gold is tantamount
To heaps of pennies on accompt.
Here, one commends the ruby lips,
There, one applauds her courtly skips.
1 Some of her friends strove to remove her corpse to their own burial place.
Mr. Robert Kirk's Note-book 241
The crouching back ; the simpering face,
The wel-cut patch, the scrape of grace,
The dainty pace, such minute things
Men speak of friends, when their knel sings.
Your ears with such I will not vex,
This was the compend of her sex.
What man should wish to have in her
How soon required : yet made no stir.
Christ came to fetch her, it appeared ;
For He was born that1 day she died.
Kirk has one discreet reference to Charles II. In the course
of a strong enunciation of the doctrine of non-resistance, he
observes : ' As Alberico Gentile said of women, we cannot want
Kings that are not pleased with them.'
If Kirk is silent as regards the external events of the outer
world, he offers us a sufficiently clear picture of the life of his
isolated highland parish. He was alone under the eye of
barbarians. * When I hear,' he writes, ' of evil tales concerning
myself in the country (endeavouring intirely to keep the com-
mandment) only reply that I thank God they have not worse
news to occupy them with.' The following somewhat bitter
passage on pride of birth seems to indicate that the Perthshire
notables did not give Mr. Robert Kirk the consideration which
he expected :
Among the most barbarous tribes, riches or antiquity of riches in a house
or family ; or numerosity of kinred though infamous for thefts or
murthers, make a gentleman, not considering that few houses can reckon
geneologie but with the contemptibl Jews, even from Adam ; yet are they
not the better. So old riches grows mouldy and becomes trash : nothing
is so pitiful as bare antiquity. A stone is more ancient than any hous.
The clay in each man's body is alyk ancient. Each reasonable man cam
of the first man though he cannot reckon it, and so we all are brethren.
So sirnames at first were not, only Adam, Laban, Abraham, David. The
sirnames then cam only by some accidental act, some laudable, some
infamous, as Hay, Armstrong, Douglass, Longshanks, Kenmore, Iscariot,
&c. Nor can numerosity of clan gain honour, for the commons are in
kinred as numerous as nobles, and beggars begat as many children as kings.
Moreover by nature all blood is of one colour and alyke red, nor does
death or dust distinguish betwixt clown and Caesar. The wise man then
that gives verdict according to God's mind calls the only Righteous and
Gody man more excellent than his neibour ; wisdom only makes the soul
and face to shine. He who has most knowledge, love and practice of
divine things, of a prudent spirit, sober and just, is the gentile person,
having the true and durabl accomplishments, and as the Bersans is nobl in
1 On Christmas day.
242 David Baird Smith
mind before God and of most candid and acceptabl behavour before all
good men ; while those that are the offscouring of their kinred and yet
boast of their gentility usually despyse others and so become a scorning
themselves notwithstanding of all their barren nobility.
He suffered in a more material fashion from the thieving pro-
clivities of his parishioners. In a moment of exaltation, he wrote
Does another rob you ? Sure you but quit to the common use of the
world what was the world's both before and when you had the use of it
yourself. Your brother makes use of what you do not. So, if you be a
citizen of the world, you will not much grudg ; for both prime nature and
perfect Christianity are for community. Envy and sin and narrowness of
heart occasioned property.
But he changed his tune when he became a victim :
As 'tis more haynous to act villany on Sunday than another ; in the
church than private house, so to wrong a churchman and his goods than
any other man's as being more nearly and wholly dedicate to God for his
immediate service, and so a touching of himself and unhallowing of his
sacred name by a great contempt unheard of among infidels to their pagan
priests : so as robbing and stealing from ministers is a visibl token of
atheism and total decay of the sense of God and religion, for they would
just do so to God himself their master, if they could ; and to secure them
God joyned them to Kings, saying, Touch not mine anoynted and do my
prophets no harm. Ps. Indeed nature made all things common, but God
and reason restricted to properties, that sinful man might not turn all
slothful in hopes to live on one another's industry, and so the world
be unlaboured.
He deplored the clan feuds which distracted the country side :
What narrow-spiritedness is in men voyd of the love of God and (man)
his image ; when if a difference arise betwixt two of divers sir-name,
instead of a common endeavour of the rest to reconcile them, it shall create
an odium, a feud between both the clans, each espousing their kinsman's
interest. How can the world stand and the voyce of religion be heard in
the throng of such barbarous impieties. How true is it, homo homini lupus ?
No creatures prey on their own kind but man. Look through tame and
ravenous, none make it their own profit or glory to kill or steal from those
of their own feather or keel.
and the bitterness with which a litigation was conducted :
'Tis great weakness to pursue a Law quarrel and yet not be friendly to
one another. Let the lawyiers plea for justice, let the two contrary parties
keep Christian charity ; else they lose much more than any of them can
gain by the Bargain. This is an universal infirmity now among all ranks.
That a plea of a shilling or two breaks all Christian bonds and makes a
base feud and reproachful tak among the parties.
Mr. Robert Kirk's Note-book 243
Sharp practice in money matters was not unfamiliar to the
Parish minister :
Many would inrich themselves by borrowing and give papper for a king-
dom, in hopes by tricks of Law to over-reach and compound with the
creditor. Heretofore a word was enough for the borrower and his posterity ;
now oaths and bonds cannot have clauses to ty the false and slipping
debitors fast enough with, but they will find some subterfuge to escape by,
or beg and force the creditor to quit the most part.
The vices and shortcomings with which Kirk had to deal
were those common to weak humanity such as drunkenness,
lust, superstition, non-church going, neglect of family worship
and the religious instruction of the young. He was no ex-
tremist. * A kindly motion,' he wrote, * towards a person
present, or taking occasion to remember some absent for main-
teaning of Christian familiarity and society in our moderate
enterteanments, is not unsuitable. But tippling at Christenings,
Bargainings, visits, Light-wakes, are unchristian and unsuitable/
Again, ' Pray also for the King's health and drink for thy own.'
Provided the services of the Church were attended, Kirk was
willing to leave the disposal of the rest of the Sunday to what he
describes in another passage as ' the masculine liberty of the
Christian.' ' Plowmen,' he writes, ' sit still in Church on
Sundays. Some need relaxation that day, to others it were
neither necessary, pious, nor prudent.' But church services
must not be neglected.
Those who stay in churchyard and taverns doing secular business on
Lord's days as Gallios and Laodiceans, are spewed out of God's house from
among his peopl and oft are furthest behind both in business of soul and
estate according to Math. vi. 33.
He approved of public penance, but it was not a sufficient
deterrent. ' Many of you weep to the minister, but wantonly
laugh and sport immediately in other company.' ' O, what a
confused ravening world wold it be if only Religious bands ruled
it, without the Civil Laws ! '
I would particularly recommend to those of my charge to use constant
family prayer, and forbear swearing, as rare characters of painful Christians.
Prayer draws Heaven to our aid in all that is difficult for us against we com
there. The negativ duty of not breaking the third command (so universally
violate) shows we take pains to share a common vice. Otherwise by usual
oaths none will trust us much in a solemn oath. Besydes shall we leap on
a man's throat if he say, ' You lie,' or (Lamb . . . ) & be enraged at men's
prophaning our Earthly father, and ourselves so gracelessly despyse the
244 David Baird Smith
sacred name of our Heavenly father ? Will God at last bring such a
person to be in one lodging with him : Oh think on ! I know some who
speaks of God ofter than any in the parish yet are debauchter than the most
of the parish : How speak they of Him ? Not by praying to Him, but at
every paltry talking and errant lie, takes His name in vain, sporting with
and making a laughing stock of that divine name and majesty ; disgracing
his maker to grace his talk. Bringing down that glorious name from
Heaven for every common beastly business (as if he behove have a cabl to
ty a fly's leg with).
Again,
Many think they pray sufficient in their families if they sit and say grace
to meat, morning and evening, but are there not other benefits to be
thankful for ? & blessings spiritual ? Are not sins to confess and crave
pardon for ? Are not increase of graces and virtues to seek ? And not
intercessions to be made for others ? Are we not to bow the knee in
prayer solemn to the God of our life ? To show he is far above us and not
our companion to sit with when we speak to him ?
Preaching appeared to have little effect :
In country parishes where few get their children to schools, or retean or
use what they learned in youth, so much as to make them understand the
Holy Scriptures, which are the foundation of all piety and honesty (if well
remembred in its several precepts and examples) makes that so very few or
none understand sermons tho' dayly acquainted with them, so that many
thousand good discourses are spent among deaf stones and men and timber
every day. Great therfor must be the pains in kindling som sparks of
knowledge by catechising and rooting the youth in the principls of religion
e'er they can attean to be attentive to a sermon, and not only gaze (but not
understand) like bruits.
The only remedy was to be found in the faithful exercise of
the pastoral office :
Tho' a peopl were convoyd and helpt up to heaven by two faithful
united pastors' pains, one on every hand of them, I suppose abundantia non
nocet. Barbarous peopl's necessity (had they eyes to see it) requires all that
can be done for their information and reformation.
It is clear that Kirk was a moralist, something of a casuist, and
a wise spiritual physician. The following passages are typical :
Fear is the scrupolous man's disease and that is infinit but unreasonabl
fear is easiest cured and laid aside. Use prayer and fasting. Fear great
known sins most. Avoid excess in mortifications. Interest not in intricate
questions. (Things practical are the hinges of immortality). Have your
religion as near the usages of common life as you can. Make no vows of
any lasting employment. Avoyd companies, employment and books that
raise clouds as phantastic legends anent rare saints. Bring body in a fair
Mr. Robert Kirk's Note-book 245
temper, kindl in mind a high esteem of God and His mercy. Pursue the
purgativ way of religion against vice before the illuminativ. Be instructed
in practical general lines of life and pursue axioms of Christian philosophy,
so these impertinent flies of conscience will slide off. Hold that which is
certain and let what's uncertain go.
There is a cunning in porter-craft and mystery. Who bears a burthen
or cross, must compact it well. Lay it well on (use it, which is as oyling).
Go steady, and be cheerful ; the mind delighted suffers not the body to
feel the weight.
It is possible that Kirk turned for relief from isolation and
depression to the Secret Commonwealth, but apart from this
relaxation, he appears to have been blessed with a good diges-
tion, and to have been free from * the stone,' that rock upon
which so much of the spiritual life of Scotland was built.
No dispeptic could repeat the following pious ejaculation as
Kirk does. It has the pointed brevity of a patent medicine
advertisement :
With great ease hath God's wisdom appoynted the many divers parts of
man's body to be fed, only by putting some meat down his throat ; God
himself and his servant nature doe the rest.
Kirk was an episcopalian of the school of Leighton, and
while he had no admiration for the Roman communion, he had
nq. illusions regarding the Scottish Reformation :
The Scottish Reformation became deformed in ruining Babel and rearing
up Jerusalem, by making the minister's coat too short and Gentries too
wide. The clergy lost their temporals when the gentry became spiritual.
But it was the sweetness that many of them found in God's bread called
Babel's spoyls that edgd their jehu-like zeal against the idolatry. For now
how soon all is parted and no more is expected for kything religions, their
devotion is become key-cold and contentions furious. Thus reformation
as wisdom is only likd with an inheritance and dowry. And those who
left not a loaf in Rome, but compleated pure religion in all its numbers,
have almost lost all religion immediately after seeking of all.
Of the Presbyterian he wrote :
Presbyterians say that a definite discipline is as essentially requisite to a
church as a church to Christian religion. Where then is their Church
now 1680 ? They first preach Christian liberty, purity of ordinations &c.,
but whenever they make up a competent number out of other churches,
down goes liberty, and oaths and covenants must be invented to bind them
all in a fraternity together lest they scatter away again as mist to nothing ;
then is toleration decryd, order, unity and government cryd up, no more
free use of indifferent things. Lo how their simpl followers are mocked !
246 David Baird Smith
the crocodile weeps and devours ; provender is pretended but the bridl
intended to hold them fast to be ridden as they please. O subtel guydes,
and blind followers !
His judgment of the covenanting extremists was acute :
Papists and campites (or hill-side clergy) like Sampson's foxes, look
sundry ways from one another, but are ty'd together by their tails, rudders
and errors ; and both do grin and bark at the orthodox, church and state :
Both hold, or practise as if sacraments had efficacy from the quality of
ministrators. Both hold resisting and excommunicating the lawful supreme
powers. Both maintain prophecy and miracls in these later times notwith-
standing of the surer word of prophecy. Also, both value success beyond
martyrdom.
Again,
Our schismaticks look more on the pomp than purity of religion ; may
they go as throng to heaven as to preaching-houses. In their martial
attempts for promoting their cause, the prove first a viper, rent their
mother ; then a wasp, sting their brother ; and fall as he, animasque in
vulnere ponunt. I do lykewise suppose much of their disease is natural and
easier cured by a chirurgion than a divine. They are impatient of superiors
in church or state, and think nothing God's word or worship but preaching,
albeath it receives from, but gives nothing to God. They are Mahometans,
would propagate their religion by the sword and carnal weapon. They
still practise as if the efficacy of sacraments depended on the administrator,
not author.
It is interesting to find that the Quakers seem to have attracted
his attention, and he writes of them at some length, with indig-
nant severity.
For his own part, he believed strongly in a fixed form of
service, if wisely used
The English service appoynts the auditors to follow the preacher audibly
and methodically in the petitions of prayer, all rehearsing the same words
for consents' sake. This is far from the indolent custom among the vulgar
of Scotland (which yet is not amended) when all in the house, master and
servants, men and women, blates and speak confusedly, not one knowing
what another says, nor two speaking the same words to the God of order ;
can this be in faith, or can it be with common understanding ? How then
can God grant when we know not what nor how we seek ?
Hold to form of ancient sound words of the Church and that will
introduce you to the faith and works of the ancients.
The first invention of ceremonies being ill and papish (as an error in first
conviction) whatever be the after-glosses they readily turn men to their
original at last. Shun then suspition, in a sacred act be tender and do not
ill-lyke.
Mr. Robert Kirk's Note-book 247
The tolerant meditative spirit of Kirk would have the Church
as wide as is consistent with the preservation of essential truth.
' Rites,' he wrote, ' are but shadows to the body of substantial
religion Jesus revealed for renewing the Mind and reforming
the Life.' Again, he notes, ' Nothing should be urged as
conditions of all Churches' communion but what is generally
necessary to salvation.' And again, ' Unless a man be a Christian
he cannot be a heretick. A church may be true as to being
absolutely, though not perfectly ; essentials may be, and integrals
be wanting. Even uncharitableness to dissenters in small
things, is damnable.' The struggle towards the Christian ideal
must not be distracted by side issues :
This world is the place where we must provide for a better world ; and
we must be as lyke the place we wish to go unto as we can ; for thereby
we fit ourselves for it ; and therfore has this midl world a mixture of evil
and good, that the gallantry of the right chuser may be known ; and so
heaven may have only the best, men of heroic and generous spirits ; choice
persons severd from the Rouf.
There are only two prayers in the Note-book. One must
suffice :
Jesus, our great advocate, suffer us not to shame our religion by our life.
Such as suffer for good-doing, uphold ; such as suffer for evil, let them not
think they are thereby martyrs. Confirm in the belief of enjoying better
company such as those removest from this life, who shall also meet with all
their faithful friends they left here. If ought temporal please, what will
the eternal.
If it be true that Mr. Robert Kirk was chosen as her chaplain
by the Fairy Queen, Her Majesty is to be congratulated on her
good taste.
The foregoing extracts give but a partial idea of the quality
of Kirk's Note-book, as they leave the greater part of it un-
touched. He deals at some length, and with the occasional
felicity of phrase which he possessed, with the question of Free
Will and Predestination, the Metaphysics of the Stoics, Astral
influences and omens, the Jewish dispensation, the failure of
the Churches, the Roman controversy, Faith and Works, with
a reference to the Jesuits, Church ceremonies, the office of the
Christian Prince in religious matters, Church government
questions of exegesis, the Neo Platonists, the philosophy of
Descartes, which he approved in some respects, War, and
Missionary enterprise, which he would only sanction if assistance
248 Mr. Robert Kirk's Note-book
were invited by the Civil power of the country concerned.1 He
knew something of the Fathers, of the classics, of the contem-
porary controversial writers, of foreign theologians, and writers
such as Bodin and William of Paris. There are also some ten
pages devoted to curious observations on the habits of moles
and farriery, and the last page contains the familiar Latin metrical
version of the prohibited degrees.
The interest which the Note-book offers is to be found in its
intimate quality. Its pages contain the private reflections and
judgments of a mind which was at the same time pensive
and curious, austere and tolerant, limited and undistinguished and
yet within its province wise and understanding.
DAVID BAIRD SMITH.
1 A few examples may be given :
* Edification having a comliness as that of fair birds . . . ' ' spiritual and of
eternal decency.'
' As some women are wiser than men, yet men are the more understanding sex.'
' But even this excellent liberty has trembling and weakness, as the needl of a
dyal.'
' The will coyns the bullion, and sets a figure to ciphers and governs the rest.'
' If man's individual actions were restrained by the cut-throat of necessity,
Reason were locked up and could not stir.'
' There is no infidell in Hell.'
' A maule with the ministry never prospered.'
' Wise fervency in prayer is the fire that burns the odors.'
' A cold leiturgie galopt over, or cast through a seive with parat-like tautoligies
or lukewarm lip labour, sayes one, gets a lean blessing."
* 'Tis some solace to be vanquisht by one worthy to command.'
* Lament not a good man dying. He but goes home from his exile.'
* For we bind not absolutely but respectively, not as to the victory, but as to
the wrestling, not as the event, but as to the means.'
The Appin Murder, 1752
COST OF THE EXECUTION
AN Account of the Cost of the execution of James Stewart of
the Glens, which is preserved in the Treasury Board
papers, may not be without interest. The story of this judicial
murder is too well known to require much recapitulation. It
is the theme of R. L. Stevenson's romances, Kidnapped and
Catriona, and has been much written about in recent years by
Andrew Lang and others.
Colin Campbell of Glenure, who was the acting factor on the
forfeited estate of Ardshiel, was found murdered in the wood of
Lettermore not far from the ferry of Ballachulish in Appin on
May I4th, 1752. Suspicion fell on two kinsmen of Ardshiel,
Allan Breck Stewart as the actual murderer, and James Stewart
of the Glens (whose home at Duror was about two miles from
the spot of the murder) as an accessory. Allan escaped, but
James was arrested and tried at the Circuit Court at Inveraray.
The Duke of Argyle, Lord Justice General, was the presiding
judge. In the jury there were eleven Campbells. The Lord
Advocate prosecuted, an almost unheard of thing at a circuit
criminal court. The trial had become a political and a tribal
struggle. A Campbell had been killed in Stewart territory, and
a Stewart must be sacrificed. With the head of the Campbells as
presiding judge, along with a jury of Campbells, James Stewart
had no chance. He was found guilty on September 25th,
and the sentence pronounced on him was as follows :
* The said James Stewart to be carried back to the prison of Inveraray, and
therein to remain till the fifth day of October next, according to the
present stile1 ; and then to be delivered over by the Magistrate of Inveraray
and keeper of the said prison, to the sheriff-depute of Argyleshire, or his
substitutes ; and to be by them transported to the shire of Inverness, and
1This refers to the "New Style" or Gregorian Calendar introduced in Great
Britain on September I4th, 1752, seven days before Stewart's trial began.
2co W. B. Blaikie
i
delivered over to the sheriff-depute of Inverness, or his substitutes ; and
to be by them transported to Fort William, and delivered over to the
governor, deputy-governor, or commander in chief, for the time, of the said
garrison, to be by them committed to prison in the said fort, therein to remain
till the jth day of November next, according to the present stile ; and then
again to be delivered over to the sheriff-depute of Inverness-shire, or his
substitutes ; and to be by them transported over the ferry of Ballachelish ;
and delivered over to the sheriff-depute of Argyleshire, or his substitutes,
to be by them carried to a gibbet to be erected by the said sheriff on a
conspicuous eminence upon the south-side of, and near to the said ferry :
and decern and adjudge the said James Stewart, upon Wednesday the 8th
day of November next, according to the present stile, betwixt the hours of
twelve at noon and two afternoon, to be hanged by the neck upon the said
gibbet, by the hands of an executioner, until he be dead ; and thereafter to
be hung in chains upon the said gibbet ; and ordain all his moveable goods
and gear to be escheat and inbrought to his Majesty's use, which is pro-
nounced for doom.'
It was in fulfilment of this sentence that the costs in the follow-
ing Account submitted by the Sheriff-Substitute of Argyle were
incurred.
The gibbet was erected on a mound near the south slip of
Ballachulish Ferry.
To THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORDS
COMMISSIONERS OF His MAJESTY'S TREASURY.
MAY IT PLEASE YOUR LORDSHIPS.
In obedience to your Lordships commands signified . . . Mr. Hardinge
the 1 5th of August last post we did take . . . into consideration the Petition
of Archibald Campbell deputy Sheriff of Argyleshire hereunto annexed
and did order the Deputy Kings Remembrancer to examine the account
and ... of the money expended by him in the execution of James Stewart
for the murther of Colin Campbell of Glenure factor on the Estate of
Ardsheal who did report to us that the whole vouchers . . . Disbursements
charged by him and amounting to one hundred and eight pounds seventeen
shillings and Tenpence were sufficiently vouched so that we are humbly of
opinion he is justly entitled to payment of what he has so expended.
All which is Humbly submitted to your Lordships great wisdom by
Your Lordships most obedient Humble
(Signatures illegible, much torn and faded.)
Edinburgh Exchequer Chambers 2yth February, 1754.
The Appin Murder, 1752
251
Account of Disbursements of Archibald Campbell Sheriff Substitute
of Argyleshire upon the Execution of James Stewart who was
hung in chains at Ballichilish the i8th November 1752 for the
Murder of Mr. Campbell of Glenure.
To the Sheriff's Expenses in going to Fortwilliam with the
prisoner to deliver him to the Sheriff of Inverness conform
to the sentence per accompt.
To Wrights for making the Gibbet and coming from Fort-
william to Ballichilish to put it up per Ace*- & Rect-
To the Smith at Fortwilliam for Iron and making plates for
the Gibbet and coming to Ballichilish to put on the plates
per Ace4- & Rec*
To Mr. Douglas Sheriff Depute at Fortwilliam for one Execu-
tioner from Inverness, Timber to make the Gibbet Carry-
ing the Gibbet to Ballichilish, Boats employed to Ferry
the troops & sundry other articles per Ace*- and Rect-
To Do. for a saill that was destroyed by the storm the day of
the Execution it being made use of for a tent, and i6/-
allowed further to the Boatmen being detained by Stormy
weather per Mr. Douglas missive.
"o the Sheriff's Expenses in going to Glasgow to engage an
Executioner from thence not being sure of one from
Inverness and not chusing to trust to one Executioner for
fear of accidents.
To the Executioner from Glasgow and his Guard for their
pains and expenses to Inverary the rest of their expenses
being defrayed by the Sheriff per Ace*- & Rect-
To the Smith at Inverary for making the Chains and going
from thence to Ballichilish to put them on, His Expenses
being defrayed by the Sheriff per receipt.
To the Sheriff's Expenses and his attendants consisting of 12
men and nine horses in going to Ballichilish and returning
per ace*-
To paid the men hyred to guard the Chains, Sheriffs Officers
expenses and diverse other Charges per Acct-
Postage of Letters from the Lord Justice Clerk and Kings
Agent for taking precognitions anent the murther and pro-
ceedings
Sterling.
9- 17' l
10. 10. o
(torn)
20. 13. o
2. 5. 4
1. 18. 6
14. 10. o
8. o. o
8. 12. 7
(torn)
2. O. O
£108. 17. 10
[Treasury Board Papers. Bundle 355 No. 184.]
The subsequent fate of the gibbet and the victim's body is
told by Mr. David Mackay, who diligently collected the
traditions of the district. * The soldiers who guarded the
gibbet used to allow friends of the victim to pay their respects to
his mortifying remains. A very aged resident in Ballachulish
252 The Appin Murder, 1752
repeated to me the account given him in his early youth by an
old Stewart lady of her pious attentions in wiping the dust from
her clansman's dead face and of her terror in later months, when
the bones were dry, at their clattering in the winds when she
passed down the public road o' nights. The ghastly scene made
day loathsome, and the restless bones — -joined together with
wire where Nature's joining had given way — made night weird
in Ballachulish for several years. At last the old folks say a
' daft ' lad determined to make an end of the local horror ....
He overthrew the gallows, and cast it into Loch Leven, whence
it floated down Loch Linnhe and up Loch Etive, finally landing,
a strange piece of floatsam, near Bonawe. Here it found a
humaner use, and was incorporated in the structure of a wooden
bridge. The bones of its victim were secretly collected and
buried by night, it is said, with the kindred dust of some of the
Ardshiel Stewarts in Keil Kirkyard, in Duror of Appin.
Bishop Forbes, .... in his journals of episcopal visitations,
tells that young Stewart of Ballachulish carefully gathered the
bones and placed them in the same coffin with the body of Mrs.
Stewart.' l
W. B. BLAIKIE.
1 From Appendix XVII. of the admirably annotated modern edition of The
Trial of James Stewart, edited by David N. Mackay. (Hodge & Son 1907.)
A Seventeenth Century Deal in Corn
PICKLE land, a lump of debt, a doocot and a law plea '
is a proverbial saying in the kingdom of Fife, which
describes with much accuracy the position of many of the lairds
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With a depre-
ciated and scanty currency, considerable taxation, and a depressed
and inefficient agriculture, their living was always a precarious
one ; and a bad season would frequently compel them to resort
to the facilis descensus Averni^ which commenced with a Band to
a neighbouring laird, a Kirkcaldy merchant, or an Edinburgh
Writer to the Signet, and ended in alienation of their ancestral
acres.
The cadet branch of the family of Wemyss known as Wemyss
of Bogie was typical of the small lairds in Fife, and indeed in
Scotland generally. Their history, during the half dozen
generations they lasted, from the end of the sixteenth to the
end of the eighteenth century, escaped the notice even of the
late Sir William Fraser ; and the considerable charter chest
they left behind them passed into the possession of another
family, by marriage, on the death of the last Sir James Wemyss
of Bogie, Baronet, and have only recently become available for
study.
They owned coal mines and salt pans at Kirkcaldy, and a large
part of their revenue was derived from these sources. But the
expenses of working were very great, and they were compelled
to turn to other classes of business in order to raise funds for
the development of their pits and for dealing with the ever-
present danger of flooding.
The John Wemyss referred to in the correspondence below
subsequently became the second baronet of Bogie, who inherited
from his father a more than usually encumbered estate ; at the
time, in 1696, Bogie itself was alienated, and John Wemyss
was occupied in deals in coal, salt and ' victuall ' with certain
Kirkcaldy merchants and partners.
254 Sir Bruce Seton, Bt.
On ist April, 1696, John Wemyss, along with James Ross
and Alexander Williamson, merchants, negotiated with one
Nicoll Young, skipper of the Elizabeth of Findhorn, to take his
vessel north and fetch a cargo of barley and meal from Inver-
breackie to Kirkcaldy. The charter-party runs as follows :
* That is to say, the said Nicoll Young has fraughted, and
be thir presents setts and fraughts to the saidis Johne
Wemyes, Alexander Williamsone and James Ross all and haill
his Barke callit the Elizabeth of Findorne, and for that effect
oblidges him to have his said Bark sufficiently lighted with ane
skilfull companie of seymen for navigaiting of his sd Bark from
the harbour off Dysart to the Port of Inverbreckie in Ross and
their to ly six dayes for intaiking of and loading of Bear and
meall at the said Port, and from thence, winde and weither
serveing, to saill and transport the saide shippe and loading to
the Harbor of Kirkaldie and their to ly three dayes for intaiking
such ane loading as the said fraughters shall finde convenient,
to be unloaded in any port within the Murray Firth, and I, the
said Nicoll, oblidges me not to suffer any of the saidis merchants
goodis to be damnified through his or his companies default,
sea hazard excepted.'
In return for his services the skipper was to receive :
' eighteen pounds Scotts money, and that for each chalder
of the sd Victuall shall be measured out either at her Returne to
Kirk caldie, or at any point she shal aryve at in Murray ffirth,
and with ane barell of ale and ane boll oif meall together also with
Towadge and Rowadge and pittie pillitage and other dewties,
conforme to the custoume of the sea . . . with the soume of
Three pounds Scotts for ilka day ye sd Barke sail be longer
detained at any of the ports than the lydays above said.'
The partners then decided that * Jeams Ross ' should travel
north and meet the ship. On 3Oth April, 1696, instructions were
given to him in the form of a * Comisione,' which runs as follows :
Memorandum. The laird of Bogie and Alexr Williamsone
to Ja: Ross.
Imprimis. When, you get to your port designed be cairfull
to see ye sufficience off ye hold of ye weshell.
2. to tak good cair to see ye victuall be good, weel dryit and
holsome and good measure, and, for ye meall I pray you look
well to it.
3. yl you advert with the sky per not to come out of any
harbour withoot a bearing gell (gale) of wind for ye mair securitie ;
A Seventeenth Century Deal in Corn 255
and fear all shyps at sea, you keeping ye shoar aboard. Stand
not upoune a little cost in harbouring at all convenient
occasions.
4. If you can gitt a bargain of good bear, meall and outes,
to be delyvered at Kirkcaldie free of all hazards and costs, we
are satisfied to give Eight pounds Scots for each boll, paybell
within a moneth after delivery, ye quantitie not being above
sex hundredthe bolls. Hope you may doe it cheaper.
5. If it should fall out, as God forbid, y* you should be
tucke by a french privitier, then and in yl uncaise, you sail goe
ye lenthe of four hundredthe pounds Scotts for ransom of ye
meall and bear ; but I hop you sail doe it cheaper. And, in
cais it be that ye master be unwilling to ransome his shippe,
then we allow you to pay ye lenth of fiftie pound sterling money,
qch we oblidg ourselves to pay, bill upon sight.
JOHN WEMYES.
ALEXR WILLIAMSONE.
Kirkcaldie ye 30 April 96.
Armed with his * comisione ' James Ross started on ist May,
1696, on his journey north 'to Inverbrekie in Ros,' and the
* accompt ' gives in some detail the expenditure involved in
those days in travelling on business to a place 155 miles from
home.
The horse hire was at the rate of two shillings a mile, to
which must be added the charge for a man and boy. The whole
amounted to ' i lib 145 ' daily while travelling. When not
actually engaged in moving from place to place * my awin
chairges ech day was I Ib 45 a day.' On arriving at Inver-
brekie, Ross tells us he spent some days ' goieng through the
Kuntray inqweiring for mor victual!, conforme to comition,'
and eventually had to go to Fraserburgh. The meal, amounting
to 34 bolls, was delivered in bulk for shipment ; and the accompt
includes an item of £8 Scots for * 35 ells of seeking at 5 shillings
the ell to hold the meall.' Entertainment of * the skipper and
his crewe and those that put the victuall aboord ' cost £7, and
,2 was expended on ' information of privetteers.' When the
coast was reported clear the Elizabeth left for Kirkcaldy and
James Ross returned by land, with a total account of expenses
lounting to £118.
On the back of the charter-party is endorsed a receipt by the
skipper for freight at £10 Scots per chalder for a cargo of 250
256 Sir Bruce Seton, Bt.
bolls (sixteen bolls to the chalder), with the boll of meal for his
own use * in caplachin ' l as arranged.
Meanwhile a letter had arrived from Isabel Countess of
Seaforth, sister of the Earl of Cromarty, addressed to ' Jeams
Ross at the shoarhead of Kirkadie ' with the following instruc-
tions :
' to put aboord of skiper Youngs ship as many coalls as she
can cairy. Since I am to pay at the rate of 1 8 chalder of victuall
(grain) mak the bargain as well as ye can wi him, and let the
condescendance be in writ.
Send half a last of whyt salt also try if you can get a good
penyworth of linen cloth and adverte me at what rate. And
if any of your aqwantances has good upright tyken (ticking) to
mak lat them mak it lyk the patron I gave you.
Tak cair the coalls be good. I lou (like) not a dead heavy
coall that burns not briskly.
I have only given you seven pounds sterling at this tym.'
This order was complied with and the Collector of Customs
at ' Inverbrackie ' certified, in due course, that William Young
1 brought to the Road his bark loadened w* coalls and lyvered
the sd coll for the Countes her use,' and took back another
cargo of barley and meal.
In the account of this transaction James Ross states that he
sent ' 15 dozens of colls at £6 Scots per dozen,' and 7 bolls of
' sallt ' packed in ' barralls being all good oaik stands.' The
salt cost £2 per boll and the ' barralls ' were j£i each, and the
total due amounted to ^105 135. 4d. Scots.
The Dowager Lady Seaforth acknowledged receipt of the
goods in August, 1696, and sent * 3 pound sterlen ' to complete
payment. She adds : ' ye neided not sent oaken trees (barrels)
with the salt for they are of no use to me after, the skiper said
such as he had for eightpence good enough.' Finally, with the
balance, after paying for the coal and salt, she asks * Jeams ' to
' by (buy] linen, about 1 8 penc the ell, and a bit harn to wrap
it in,' and begs him to ' send me all your news publik and privat ' ;
she signs her letter * your assured frind Isobell Seaforth.'
The partners having taken delivery of their cargo of 250 bolls
of bear and meall proceeded to divide it. After allowing for
the one boll given to Skipper Young they should each have
1 " Caplachin " (variously spelt) is really an old German word ; it is sometimes
translated as " hat money." It means a tip to the master for care of the cargo,
over and above the freight he receives.
A Seventeenth Century Deal in Corn 257
received 72 bolls of bear and 1 1 bolls of meall ; but they appear
to have discovered an ' outcom ' of one boll for each 20 bolls
of bear laden.
Trouble then began. They had already entered into a
contract with Andrew Ross, Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh,
to pay for the original cargo of ' 250 bols meall & Bear, good
and sufficient Clean Coller, weel dight, to be measured with the
old accustomed measure or firlot ' and to dispose of it to them
at the price of £6 1 35. ^.d. Scots per boll. The money was to be
paid by the first of July, under a penalty of 500 merks. The
Laird of Bogie and his partners failed to implement this agree-
ment, with the result that Andrew Ross got letters of ' horning
and poinding ' against them on the 1 5th July.
After detailing the history of the case, this document charges
* our lovitts . . . messengers and sheriffs * that * incontinent,
thir our letters seen, you pass and, in our name & authoritie
comand and charge the saidis John Weemes, Alex1 Williamsone
& James Rosse personally or at their dwelling places, to pay
the amount due, together with the penalty of 500 merks, under
the pain of Rebellion & putting of ym to the home, wherein
if they faillzie that incontinent thereafter yee denunce ym our
Rebells & put ym to the home and moving all yr moveable
goods and gear to our use for their contemt and disobedience.*
The instructions were of course carried out * incontinent ' by
George M'Farlane, messenger, and the Laird and Alexr William-
son were formally charged. James Ross was away and the
messenger ' affixed ane Instrument upon his most patent door
after six severall knocks given be me yrupon, as use is.'
As no further reference appears in the dossier of this case to
the debt to Andrew Ross it must be presumed the amount was
paid. But for many years afterwards the division of the grain
on the one hand and of the costs on the other occupied the
attention of the partners. James Ross died a year or two after-
wards ; but at least ten years after Skipper Young had safely
navigated the bark Elizabeth to the harbour of Kirkcaldy we
find correspondence between Alexr Williamson and ' my dear
gossop ' the laird — now Sir John WTemyss, Bt. — suggesting a
final settlement of the accounts.
Judging by the list of debts left by Sir John at his death in
1712 it seems unlikely that Alexr Williamson ever got his
money.
BRUCE SETON.
The Earl of Arran and Queen Mary
IT is remarkable that with the unabating interest which gathers
round the person and fortunes of Mary Stewart little regard
has been paid to one whose career touched hers, sometimes very
closely, during a period of more than twenty years. Bothwell is
notorious. Arran, a man of nearly the same age, a prominent
figure in the rebellion which ended in the Scottish Reformation,
upon whom for many months the eyes of Protestant Europe were
fixed, has been relegated to obscurity or caricatured as a shiftless
idiot. The portrait of him in The Queen's Quhair is not a dis-
tinguished achievement in historical verisimilitude, if veri-
similitude was intended : the brief sketch in the Scots Peerage
is both inadequate and inaccurate : only in the Dictionary of
National Biography is there any attempt to narrate a story which,
apart from an almost tragic character of its own, has an important
bearing upon events already familiar to the reader of history.
One or two striking facts in the life of Mary during the
months which immediately followed her return to Scotland in
1561 suggest a closer examination of Arran's career. The
Queen had not been three weeks in the country when there was
a proposal to establish a body-guard. Besides casual references
to the matter in the diplomatic correspondence, there are express
statements in the pages of Knox and Buchanan which connect it
with the ambition of the Hamiltons, and prove, if that were
necessary, that the plan was no mere imitation of usage at the
court of France, but the precaution of suspicion and fear.
Information more detailed comes from an unpublished record
in the Register House. The thirds of benefices, as is well
known, were allotted to the Crown in order to meet an expenditure
which had for long outgrown the patrimonial revenue, and which
had prompted Mary's father and grandfather, with the connivance
of the papacy, to appropriate on occasion the rents of the Church.
Among the items of expense entered by the Collector for 1561,
including the first assignation to the Reformed clergy, is the
259
cost of maintaining the guard ; and we learn that there was a
body of eighteen archers in pay from January to March, 1562 ; 1
that on April i the whole guard was permanently ' erected,' draw-
ing annual salaries amounting to £9000 Scots. Extracts from this
record relative to the guard were printed by the Maitland Club
in the first of its miscellany volumes ; but in those days editors
were too modest to offer explanations, and it does not seem to
have occurred to the contributor that the erection to full strength
coincided exactly with the revelation of a plot against the person
of the Queen, involving both Arran and Bothwell, or that the
growth of the guard during the winter had been due to suspicions
founded mainly upon the attitude of Arran and the Hamiltons,
as the historians most clearly show.
Another fact cannot fail to arrest the attentive reader of this
manuscript. Arran was consigned to the Castle of Edinburgh,
where he lay for years. Warded nobles were expected t6 find
their own living expenses. In this case the Collector of the
Thirds was directed to allow a sum of forty shillings a day during
the imprisonment. Why this departure from ordinary usage ?
Was there anything in the situation, beyond Arran's periodical
derangement of mind, to warrant exceptional treatment ?
To understand the meaning of Mary's body-guard and the
peculiar circumstances of Arran's incarceration we must go
back to the death of James V. in 1 542 and follow a very strange
career. The landmarks and the figures are familiar enough :
the track is new. The way has its own interest, even though
the general prospect is little altered ; and at points we shall find
it worth while to have left the trodden path.
At the death of James V. only the uncertain life of an infant
girl separated the Hamiltons from the throne. James Hamilton,
eldest son of the second Earl of Arran, was some five years older
than Mary ; and gossip among the patriotic immediately destined
the one for the other. What more natural than that Cardinal
Betoun should support Arran, son of a kinswoman and heir
presumptive, and should look forward to an alliance between
the children ? But Arran had been dealing with England, and
was not sound in the faith. At the death-bed of James the
Cardinal sought to exclude him from his lawful guardianship.
Henry VIII., working upon Arran's resentment, gained a
temporary success. Betoun was imprisoned ; and the little
Queen seemed to be almost within the English grasp. At once
Sc. 1561-2.
260 Professor R. K. Hannay
reaction began. Arran saw that he was on the verge of political
suicide : Lennox, of the house which stood next to the Hamiltons,
was brought from France as at least a hint of what might befall :
John Hamilton, Abbot of Paisley, upon whom the English wasted
some diplomatic hospitality on his way from the continent,
speedily corrected the views of the Earl his brother : Arran
himself began to waver. The Cardinal, passing by easy stages
from imprisonment to complete freedom, beguiled Henry by a
show of conversion — until he had made his preparations and was
ready to strike. While Henry expected a ratification of his
treaty, Betoun broached to Arran the policy which gossip
suggested at the beginning. What if his heir were to become
the husband of Mary ?
The campaigning season of 1543, as was intended, passed
away without resort to arms : the Scots engaged in diplomatic
play-acting : Henry impatient, but sanguine. He did not get
his treaty, or Mary, or young Hamilton. In November the
Cardinal showed his hand : the boy was safe in St. Andrews
Castle, pledge for the father and a subtle encouragement of his
hope. Henry raged exceedingly in 1 544. If it was necessary
to deposit Mary at Dunkeld during Hertford's invasion, St.
Andrews would be no place for the Master of Hamilton, and he
was doubtless taken as carefully as she out of harm's way.1
Arran was committed ; but under the military pressure, to
be renewed in 1545, Betoun had to consider the question of an
appeal to France and the possibility that Mary might have to
be transported to the continent. The campaigning of 1 545 did
not compel this final resort : it served chiefly to confirm opposition
to an English agreement and to strengthen the position of the
Hamiltons.2 Yet the Cardinal was seeking, it was said, to have
Mary, as well as the Master, in his Castle, looking prudently to
France and telling Arran he would keep her for his son.3
Betoun could not make up his mind. Francis I., still at war with
Henry VIII., might be disposed to seize an opportunity for action
in favour of Scotland.4 As for the boy, we learn that he was
pursuing the study of Latin with a book of rudiments and a text
of Aesop's fables.6
1 Hen. Vlll. Cal. xix. 510; TV. Accounts, viii. 3 1 9.
2 Bond by Huntly, Oct. 1545 (S/. Papers, Reg. Ho.) ; letter of John Somerville
to Mary of Guise (Corr. of Mary of Guise, Reg. Ho.).
8 Hen. PHI. Cal. xx. (2), 535.
\d. 926. 5 TV. Accounts, viii. 440.
The Earl of Arran and Queen Mary 261
In the spring of 1546 the diplomatic situation was still
unresolved. Some believed that France would consent to the
Hamilton plan : others, including Henry, who had made peace
with Francis, still hoped for a contract with Prince Edward.1
The assassination of Betoun in May, while it weakened Scotland,
had obvious advantages for the Regent Arran. The primacy
stood vacant for his brother : he was himself delivered from an
irksome control, and might prosecute more unreservedly the
policy of his house. Unfortunately, however, the heir of
Hamilton was at St. Andrews in the hands of the Cardinal's
assailants, and might be given up, with the Castle, to Henry,
who was at the same time using Lennox to obtain control of
Dumbarton. Mary of Guise resolved to combine, for the
moment, with the Hamilton party against England : Angus,
sworn to Henry, was bribed by a promise of the Cardinal's
vacant Abbey of Arbroath, and brought over his following.2
The next step was to get possession of St. Andrews Castle by
peaceful accommodation. As a precaution, young Hamilton
was excluded by Parliament from his rights as third person of
the realm so long as he remained a captive with its enemies.3
Negotiation failed : a siege became inevitable : the French
anticipated the English : at last the Castle fell, and the Regent
had his boy restored.
The restoration was but for a few months. Pinkie, a winter
campaign, and an almost desperate situation, placed the French
party in power : Arran failed to come to terms with England
and keep Mary at home : Henry II., now ruler of France, would
not give effective support until he held in pledge the heir of
Hamilton.4 Out of the wreck Arran, by compliance, saved in
the meantime his regency.5 Parliament authorised the French
marriage, momentous for Mary and for Scotland : 6 James
Hamilton, the young Master, was already in France : 7 his
father, sick with sheer vexation, made a will resigning his
children to the care of Henry II.8 To an avaricious man, who,
as was afterwards said, more than money had neither faith nor
lHea. mi. Cat. xxi. 391, 439. *C£. ibid. 1043.
3 Acts, ii. 474 ; cf. Knox, Works, iii. 410.
4Sf. Cal. i. 197, 218, 228. *lbtd. 336.
6 Acts, ii. 481.
7 TV. Accounts, ix. 185 ; Span. Cal. ix. p. 269 ; Sc. Cal. i. 238.
3 Hist. MSS. Rep. (Hamilton), 53.
262 Professor R. K. Hannay
God,1 the duchy of Chatelherault was some consolation.2 As
for his heir, there was written promise of a great marriage in
France ; 3 and many things might occur within half a dozen
years.
In 1550 the Master was put in fee of the earldom of Arran
and lordship of Hamilton, with liferent reserved for his father,
and became known thereafter as Earl.4 He followed the French
court, as the boy captain of a company of men-at-arms, mostly
Scots.5 We hear of him on active service in 1557, when his
company took part in a gallant defence of St. Quentin against
the Imperial troops.6 He would have an allowance, perhaps
not too generous,7 from the revenues of Chatelherault, where he
occasionally resided. In one letter from Mary to her mother in
Scotland Arran is mentioned. It was in the summer of 1557,
within a year of her wedding.8 Her own destination is taken
for granted. Diana of Poitiers wishes that her granddaughter,
Mile, de Bouillon, who attends Mary, should be given to Arran.
This would be very pleasant. Mile, is a good girl : so fond of
the Queen as to welcome any union which will not separate
them ; and Arran likes her. The plan appeals also to King
Henry, for he undertook to find a lady for the Earl, and Mile,
de Montpensier [the lady of the original agreement] is now
promised to another. But, for the honour of Scotland, please
to make Arran a duke and speak of the matter to his father, to
whom she has written a little note.
There is every sign of patronising good-will to her cousin in
this girlish letter : he is not within her orbit, to be sure ; yet
quite a proper fellow for her faithful de Bouillon. To Arran the
matter appeared in another light. It had never been perfectly
certain that Mary should wed Francis. There was a party
opposed to the Guises, and alive to difficulties with England
arising out of French domination in Scotland. In 1551, for
example, there had been talk of an Anglo-French marriage ;
while among the Scots there was a steady under-current of regret
1 For. Cal. iv. 630 ».
2 It was valued at 12,000 livres, and was granted Feb. 7, 1548-9 (see prints in
the Chatelherault case (French, 1865) in the Lyon Office).
z Her aid and Genealogist, iv. 98.
4 Acts andDccreets, vii. 195 ; cf. Reg. Ho. Charters, 1621-2, 1427.
5 Forbes-Leith, Seats' Men~at-Arnu, i. 189. *lbid. 98-9.
7 For. Cal. i. 870. « Labanoff, i. 42.
The Earl of Arran and Queen Mary 263
for the decision of 1548. When Mary of Guise finally con-
trived to oust Chatelherault from the regency in 1554, her
triumph was not merely personal. She had gained a political
and imperial success for her house, if she could hold her ground ;
but she had also disposed the Duke for reaction and revenge.
Young Arran was on familiar terms with his cousin. After
all, the marriage with Francis was an affair of state, and on
romantic grounds no entrancing prospect. Her regard for 'a
comely young fellow ' — as the Spanish ambassador in London
described Arran 1 — may have been sufficient to cause mis-
understanding in one who never cherished inadequate ideas of
himself. And it may not have been all misunderstanding.
When Francis died in 1560, Arran had in his possession a
ring which, according to Knox, the * Quene our Soverane knew
well yneuch.'2 Another scrap of information appears from
a curious source. The Venetian and the French ambassador at
the court of Spain were chatting about the escape of Arran from
Henry II. in 1559, of which we shall presently hear. Religious
heresy, the Frenchman held, was not the primary source of
trouble : the heresy arose from personal resentment rather than
from conviction. ' He had persuaded himself that the Queen
of Scotland was to be no one else's wife but his.' Seeing Mary
wedded to Francis, he was ' in despair and rabid,' more especially
because Henry made no attempt to appease him from the dis-
appointment. From that time he favoured the preachers, and
entered upon correspondence with Elizabeth.*
Analysis of motive is a hazardous employment. From his
very childhood Arran must have heard enough of his ambitious
destiny ; and if love came in, love and ambition would com-
mingle inextricably. To these Mary's marriage was a blow.
As to religion, it was easy for the ambassador to be disparaging ;
and it was true that Arran's Protestantism developed suspiciously
after the wedding of Mary and the accession of Elizabeth. Yet
the Protestantism, if it had a mixed and a factious origin, like
much aristocratic Protestantism in France at the time, had more
reality than that of the adaptable Chatelherault. Knox does not
seem to have questioned it : 4 Buchanan described Arran as in
^Simancas Cal. i. 39.
2 Hist. ii. 137. Chatelherault sent a number of rings and other jewels to Mary
in 1556 ; these seem to have been in his hands as Regent (Stoddart, Girlhood of
Mary> 395)-
*Ven. Cal. vii. 140. 4 Hist. ii. 156.
264 Professor R. K. Hannay
1561 ' the single defender of Gospel teaching ' r1 long after-
wards, in 1580, the Reformed Church remembered with
solicitude his services to the cause.2 An old engraved portrait
of the Earl bears an inscription in French, dwelling upon the
love, the ambition, and the barrier imposed by irreconcilable
religious convictions.3
When it was seen that England would be a Protestant power
again under Elizabeth, events began to move in Scotland and in
France. The Reformers, threatened by Mary of Guise, took
counsel with Chatelherault, who met Sir Henry Percy at the
Border in January, 1559.* Maitland of Lethington was
welcomed in London ; and he crossed the Channel 5 with one
object, at least, which we may conjecture. In February Arran
established a small Protestant congregation at Chatelherault, for
which he procured a minister from Poitiers.6 In the middle of
May, after the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, diplomatic relations
were restored, and Throckmorton went as English ambassador
to Paris.7 Then it was that Arran received ' great offers ' from
the French King, if he would come to court,8 and that his
Protestantism became seriously offensive. Henry II. was
beginning to grasp the situation. On June 18 Mary, whose
health was causing anxiety, took alarmingly ill. Peremptory
orders went out at once to fetch Arran, alive or dead.9 The whole
policy of France during these eleven years was in danger of
being undone. The Earl was not found. He had taken
warning : slipped out of the house in the darkness three days
before the messengers arrived.10 One of the gentlemen sent to
execute the command expected Mary to resent this usage of her
cousin. No apology was needed, she said : he could not do her
a greater pleasure than handle the Earl as an arrant traitor.11
Here was the definite parting of the ways. Arran had professed
to love her : now he was unmasked. To himself the affair
appeared in a different light. He was the victim of persecution
by the hated Guises, destined, as he firmly believed, for an
1 Hist. xvii. 29. 2 Calderwood, iii. 467.
8 Henderson's Mary, i. 226 ; where the engraving is reproduced.
*Sf. 1558-9. 6 Russell, Maitland of Lethington, 35.
6Beza, Hist. Eccles. i. 198 ; cf. For. Cal. ii. 45 n. ; Ven. Cal. vii. 114.
'Forbes, Public Transactions, i. 91.
8 For. Cal. i. 789 ; cf. 870.
9 Ibid. 868. 10Beza, ibid. 319. "For. Cal. i. 888.
The Earl of Arran and Queen Mary 265
exemplary execution.1 When Francis died it was not mere
obtuse vanity which encouraged him to offer Mary his hand :
if he had rebelled against her, if his conduct was a menace to her
crown of Scotland, there was something to be said in his defence.
Arran disappeared, with the connivance and the help of
Throckmorton.2 Elizabeth had suggested that he might cross
to Jersey, and so to England ; 3 but his portrait had gone to the
harbours on the Channel, which were closely watched.4 In
reality, the fugitive lurked for fifteen days in a wood near
Chatelherault, subsisting upon fruit ; then, according to the
plan which had been devised in Scotland,5 fled eastwards for
Geneva, which he reached early in July.6 Probably he had
time and opportunity to make the acquaintance of Calvin.7
Elizabeth and Cecil sent directions for a journey in disguise,
by way of Emden, to England, and provided 1000 crowns for
expenses.8 Of Arran's stay in Geneva, or of the vicissitudes of
his travel to the sea-board, we hear little. It was not until late
in August that Antwerp was reached. Cecil had commissioned
Mr. Thomas Randolph to help him out9 — the beginning of
Randolph's long connexion with Scottish affairs. How and
where the two foregathered is not stated ; but they are said to
have posed as merchants.10 On August 28 they appeared
suddenly and secretly at Cecil's house in Westminster. M. de
Beaufort, gentleman of the French King, obtained an interview
at Hampton Court, received the requisite funds, and on
September i departed for the north in charge of ' Thomas
Barnaby.' l The Spanish ambassador was completely at sea :
his French colleague could not certify Mary of Guise in time.12
Beaufort and Barnaby rode by night. They were at Alnwick
early on September 6 : at three o'clock next morning they were
secretly admitted into Berwick Castle.13 There Arran lay,
I Buchanan, Hist. xvi. 40; Sc. Cal. i. 871.
zSim. Cal. i. 82 ; For. Cal. i. 870 ; ii. 385.
3 Forbes, i. 166. *Sim. Cal. \. 40.
5 For. Cal. i. 848, 974. *Ibid. 1075, 950 ; Forbes, i. 173.
7Cf. Teulet, Tapicrs d'etat, ii. 13 : where Knox seems to imply that they were
personally known to one another.
*For. Cal. i. 995, 998.
'Randolph was at Bruges, August 24 or 25 ; ibid. 1203.
10 Sim. Cal. \. 40 ».
II For. Cal. i. 1274, I29°> I293; »• 7* »• ; Sim. Cal. i. 63.
™Fer. Cal. i. 1351. ™lbid. 1321, 1323.
266 Professor R. K. Hannay
awaiting the governor's arrangements. After dark one evening
he was conveyed out of the Castle to the south bank of the
Tweed. A gentleman met him : rode with him into Teviot-
dale ; and about one or two in the morning handed him over to
a friendly Scot, who conducted him through the hills to
Hamilton.1 There Arran remained but one day : long enough
to convince his father that he must throw in his lot with the
Lords of the Congregation.2 After despatching a message to
summon Randolph3 — things were going aright — he hastened
to Stirling, brought the insurgent lords to Hamilton, and
obtained his father's signature.4 Then he was off to St. Andrews,
and back again early in October to mobilise 700 or 800 horse,
300 of them Hamiltons.5
Arran and Lord James were the military leaders of the rebellion
against the government of Mary of Guise ; but they lacked the
money to confront the French with a standing force. At the
end of October a sum of j£iooo sterling in the disguise of French
crowns was on its way from Berwick under the charge of
Cockburn of Ormiston. In the vicinity of Traprain Law
Bothwell pounced upon the convoy, and rode off to Crichton
with the money. Arran and Lord James left operations at
Leith : missed Bothwell and his plunder by a few minutes :
finally were compelled to evacuate Edinburgh. Bothwell,
irritated by the loss of his valuables and charters, to obtain which
Arran had made a special expedition to Crichton, was glad to
have the opportunity of proclaiming his enemy a traitor, and
sent a challenge to single combat. He was ready to defend his
honour before French and Scottish, armed as Arran might
choose, on horse or on foot : he would offer, God willing, to
prove that his antagonist had not done his duty either to
authority, as a nobleman should, or to the challenger. Arran
replied that he had never threatened any true subject. Bothwell
deserved what he had got : his deed, which was that of a thief,
did not entitle him to seek combat with a man of honour. ' And
quhen soevir ye may recover the name of ane honest man, quhilk
be your lasche 6 deide ye haif lost, I sail ansueir you as I awcht,
bot nocht befoir Franche, quhom ye prepon in rank to Scottis,
1 Ibid. ii. 136.
2Sc. Cal. i. 599 ; incorrectly dated Dec. 3 For. Cal. i. 1351.
*lbld. 1356, 1365. *ltod. 1416; ii. 73.
6 Cowardly.
The Earl of Arran and Queen Mary 267
for thair is na Franche man in this realme with quhais judgement
I will haif to do.' As for duty to authority, ' albeit I am nocht
bund to gif you accompt, yit will I meynteyn that thairin ye haif
falslie leyt.' Thus was established a momentous enmity.1
What had passed at Hampton Court between Arran and
Elizabeth we do not know. The French story was that he sold
the independence of his country — obviously a mere fabrication
for his discredit.2 Elizabeth had been very careful indeed : he
must not, she said, misinterpret her kindness.3 Arran himself
had a shrewd suspicion that he was a tool ; and he had his own
views, as the English Queen doubtless knew. He was a Franco-
Scot, after all : his eyes were still fixed upon Mary : if she died,
there were his rights in the crown of Scotland : if Francis
succumbed — and his was a precarious existence — both love and
ambition might be satisfied. It was the common talk of Pro-
testant Europe that he would gain the hand of Elizabeth, if the
revolution in Scotland prospered. Sufficient then unto the day
was the evil thereof.
It is needless to follow in detail the military operations of the
winter. Depressed by the loss of Edinburgh and the doubtful
prospects of the insurrection, Arran was offended when Knox
preached at him as too ' close and solitary,' not mingling freely
with his men for their encouragement.4 Yet in actual fight he
was no laggard, and brave to recklessness. Huntly thought he
should not adventure too far in skirmishes ; for the whole weight
of the matter stood on him.5 Knox, referring to the foolish
boldness of some, mentioned with anxiety ' these two young
plants,' Arran and Lord James.6 Randolph wrote enthusiasti-
cally to Cecil of his loyalty to the cause, and of his ' daily hazards.'7
Something may have to be deducted from the language of those
who looked for a Protestant King, to vindicate the cause and,
possibly, become the husband of Elizabeth ; but there can be no
question that Arran was a strenuous leader and a loyal coadjutor
with Lord James.
In April, 1560, the pace at last began to tell, and we have the
first hint of a breakdown. Arran was forced to leave the camp
before Leith and rest in his father's lodging in Holyrood.8
1Sf. Cal. i. 558-566 ; cf. 1092 ; Knox, i. 454 ff. ; ii. 3.
2 For. Cal. ii. 467, 524 ». * Ibid. i. 1022. 4Knox, ii. 9.
5 For. Cal. ii. 594. 6 Sc. Cal. i. 638. * Ibid. 713.
722.
268 Professor R. K. Hannay
Mental pre-occupation and lack of repose seemed to be the
cause, as well they might. Elizabeth's vacillation was at the
moment causing Maitland of Lethington the gravest apprehen-
sion : he ' never had greater fear ' since he was born.1 Arran's
position was even more distracting. Francis and Mary had
been trying to detach him from England : there were offers from
the French Protestants : 2 if Elizabeth failed, and the power of
the Guises in Scotland was not crushed, what were his prospects
of the throne ? Of Mary ? Even of personal immunity ?
The Treaty of Edinburgh realised his fears. The French
were not driven into the sea, nor was Mary deposed. When
Cecil came north to the negotiations it was Lord James Stewart,
as he reported to Elizabeth, who had the personality and qualities
of a king.8 The Hamiltons were left in the air ; and Arran was
now more than ever conscious that he had been the tool of
England. Interest and prudence made Chatelherault stipulate,
under the treaty, for restoration to his French lands ; 4 while
Elizabeth sent a ' most gentle letter ' to him during the diplo-
matic discussions, and promised to preserve the persons of himself
and his son.5 The Duke feared Mary's resentment, and was
inclined to cultivate Elizabeth. This brought him into line with
Lethington and Lord James ; but he had also to consider the
Chatelherault property and his son Lord David, who had been
in the hands of the French since Arran's escape.6 In the
meantime he entered heartily into the plan that a Reforma-
tion Parliament should offer Arran in matrimony to Elizabeth.
The threat to Mary's crown might extract from her a con-
firmation of the Treaty of Edinburgh, and so at least secure
the lands.
Whether it was that Arran dreaded acceptance, distrusted
Elizabeth, or was cajoled by the French 7 and preferred to take a
risk for Mary, the first obstacle to the match was the official
bridegroom. Before Parliament met he wrote in French to the
1 Russell, Maitland of Lethington ^ 57.
2 For. Cd. ii. 758, 894. 3Sc. Cat. i. 821.
4 Keith, i. 305; Sc. Cal. i. 856. The revenues were sequestrated in 1559
(Chatelherault case, ut supra}.
5Sc. Cal. i. 877.
*Ibid. 879 (p. 457). The lands were not released by March, 1561
(ibid. 983).
''For. Cal. iii. 224.
The Earl of Arran and Queen Mary 269
English Queen, under the supervision, we may suspect, of his
father and Lethington.
Madam — Though the nobles and people of this realm have good reason
to thank your Majesty for their lives and all they have in the world, with
this good peace, I myself am infinitely more obliged for your favour, never
so little merited by one of my quality, in saving me from the hands of
those who sought my death, and restoring me safe to my country, again
possessed of its old liberty : above all, for once in my life having had
opportunity to contemplate the singular graces which God has so liberally
bestowed upon you. I can but offer your Majesty my most humble
service in any way it pleases you to employ me, praying the Creator to
grant whatever your noble heart desires.1
There is little sign of enthusiasm on Arran's part. It was a
curious circumstance that, when Lethington set off with his
colleagues on embassy, Randolph at once proceeded to keep a
very close eye upon his young friend, who flung himself into a
short but arduous siege of Castle Sempill. Arran had his
quarters with other lords in a barn, where the English agent was,
as he related with rueful humour, * the least of six that lay in one
bed.'2 Probably his duty was to keep the candidate for Eliza-
beth in a proper frame, and counteract the effect of communica-
tions which would be certain to arrive from France.
At last, on December 8, Elizabeth declined the Scottish offer,
not absolutely, but with a hint that Arran should look elsewhere.
Even if she did not know that the Queen of France became a
widow on December 5, she had heard from her ambassador that
the King was in a critical state, and that Arran's name was already
mentioned in connexion with Mary.3 He was deeply committed
to Protestantism both in France and Scotland.4 Could English
policy settle Mary with a Scottish husband and remove her from
the continental market ?
Lethington and the other envoys did not publish Elizabeth's
answer ; for the next step required deliberate consultation.5
Meanwhile Arran had returned from some thorough work
among the border thieves, not, apparently, very inquisitive about
his chances with Elizabeth, but concerned more with the death of
Francis. What a deliverance for the persecuted ! He heartily
rejoiced, and took occasion to praise God.6 Lethington's
apprehensions were soon justified. Without waiting for official
proceedings and a consideration of Elizabeth's answer in a
1Sf. Cal. i. 871. *lbld. 196. 3For. Cal. iii. 738.
4 Cf. ibid. 870-1. 5 Sc. Ca I \ . 94 5 . 6 Ibid. 934.
s
270 Professor R. K. Hannay
formal convention of estates, Arran took the bit between his
teeth. Early in January, 1561, he mentioned to Randolph that
he was sending to France : friendly letters to Navarre and the
Constable,1 and a message of loyalty in passing to Elizabeth, who
might be suspicious now that God had opened so * patent a way '
for his alliance with the Queen of Scotland. Knox had been
taken into confidence, and was no doubt aware of the real
intention.2
Randolph thought there was more in the matter than was
avowed. He was right. This was doubtless the occasion,
recorded by Knox, when Arran, in the hope that Mary * bare
unto him some favour,' wrote his letter and sent the ring she
knew.3 Was it megalomania ? Or had he been misled by
French diplomacy ? Throckmorton was convinced that Mary
hated Arran : yet she had been surprisingly cordial to his
messenger.4 By January 24 her reply was given.5 On
February 6 Lethington informed Cecil that the Earl was
* greatly discouraged ' — by Elizabeth's answer, of course.6
The discouragement had in reality a different root. Knox adds
that Arran took the answer as final, and made * no farther
persuyte,' though he bore it ' heavelie in harte,' more heavily
than many would have wished.7
It had been comparatively easy to unite Parliament on the
project of marriage with Elizabeth : when it came to a
marriage with Mary — and the plan was actually discussed —
there was an end to Lethington's cherished unity.8 According
to Randolph, Arran was still corresponding with Mary, who
kept him in play. His hopes were visionary, the Englishman
thought.9 The old Duke expressed high disapproval of his
son. Writing to Mary on his own initiative had ruined any
prospect of his becoming candidate for her hand by the authority
of the estates. Mary, too, meant mischief to the Hamiltons.
He was himself disposed to retain the regard of Elizabeth.10
Lethington and Lord James now definitely dropped Arran.
The basis of agreement with England was to be recognition
1 His supporters for Mary's hand (For. Cal. iii. 870-1).
2Sc. Cal. i. 945 ; cf. 966. 8Knox, ii. 137. 4 For. Cal. iii. 919.
6 74/V.928. 6 Sc.Cal. i. 958.
'Lang (Hist, of Scot.} prints ' wotted' for ' wissed,' which, from other instances,
apparently = ' wished.'
9 Sim. Cal. \. 123. * St. Cal. i. 966. "Ibid. 964, 966, 972.
The Earl of Arran and Queen Mary 271
by Elizabeth of Mary's right to succeed her, and on the other
side, admission of Elizabeth's status by confirmation of the
Treaty of Edinburgh. That recognition Elizabeth could not
risk ; yet she was intensely interested in Mary's matrimonial fate,
and the fact that Lethington and Stewart avoided the point did
not diminish its importance for her. Two years later Lethington
told the Spanish ambassador in London that when Francis died
Elizabeth would have had a fresh agreement with the Scots and
Chatelherault, whereby Mary should be bound to marry in
Scotland ; but he himself and Lord James refused. Danger
from France was over ; and the Queen, they held, ought not to be
constrained. Elizabeth, Lethington said, was dissatisfied : the
Duke annoyed.1 It is plain from this and other evidence that
England was using the Hamiltons, with their interest in the
confirmation of the Treaty of Edinburgh, to counter Lethington
and Lord James. This fact has not been kept sufficiently in
view by historians in connexion with Mary's passage to Scotland
in August, 1561, and her unexpected arrival at Leith. There
was something in the theory of the Spanish ambassador at Paris.
He conjectured that Elizabeth designed to shepherd Mary
towards the west, where the Hamiltons held Dumbarton and
their main power lay.2
Lord James had gone officially to France in April, and had
talked with Mary. There must have been interchange of views
about the Hamiltons ; but the dash for Leith took everyone by
surprise. When the news spread, Chatelherault was the first
important arrival, probably from Kinniel : then came Lord
James: Arran third.3 If the Hamiltons had a plan to deal with
Mary and checkmate Lord James, it was upset. On Sunday
there was mass at Holyrood, Lord James keeping the door —
what he had told Knox from the beginning that he would do.4
On Monday came the clever proclamation of Council, forbidding
any public alteration in religion and any interference with the
freedom of the household. Arran alone stood forth at the
Market Cross of Edinburgh to protest.5 In July, Elizabeth had
assured the Hamiltons that she would support their right, should
Mary die without issue, on one emphatic condition — their
adherence to the Protestant cause.6 The assurance was certainly
i-Sim. Cat. i. 215 ; cf. 139. 2 For. Cat. iv. 337 n.
*Sf. Cal. i. loio. 4Knox, ii. 143.
270-5. 6Sc. Cal. \. 992.
272 Professor R. K. Hannay
politic in the case of the Duke, who had been wavering : Arran,
says Knox, * stude constant with his brethrene ' : he even assisted
at the burning of his uncle's Abbey of Paisley.1
Thus we have Lord James and Lethington working with
Mary : Elizabeth doubtful of their intentions : Knox thundering
against the mass : Arran uncompromisingly Protestant: the
Duke not sure of his line, inclined to curry favour with the
Queen, but suspicious of her attitude to his house. At this
juncture we hear first of the projected body-guard. James
Stewart of Cardonald was to be captain ; but Lethington had
gone to see what could be made of Elizabeth, and there was
delay.2 The mutual distrust between Mary and the Hamiltons
is evident. They were excluded from their natural place in the
realm. The Queen, said Randolph on September 7, ' takes
great suspicion of fortifying Dumbarton, and has sent one to see
it.' 3 A day or two later she went to Linlithgow : whereupon
Chatelherault and Arran betook themselves to Hamilton, for
Linlithgow and Kinniel adjoined too closely.4 Arran was
inexorably opposed to the mass : declined to come to court :
cultivated the precise Protestants : was afraid of Bothwell : could
not get funds from his father.5 The Duke, as acting Governor
during the revolution, took the rents of St. Andrews from his
brother the Archbishop, who was on the wrong side of politics,
and allotted them, with those of Dunfermline and possibly
Melrose, to his son. Bothwell now claimed Melrose by the
Queen's gift, while the Council decided that Arran's tenure of
the two others should cease.6 Though Randolph attributed
Chatelherault's refusal of finance to mere ' beastly nes,'7 there
was reason in it. Arran's love of Mary was notorious, and
resources might lead to indiscretion.
How far the Duke was coquetting with the reactionaries
against Lord James and Lethington it would be difficult to say.8
While Lord James was absent at the Border courts, the Catholic
bishops, including the Primate John Hamilton, appeared at
Holyrood ; and one night Mary ' took a fray.' The guard must
1 Knox, ii. 156, 167. 2$r. Cal. i. 1017 (Sept. 7). 3 Ibid.
*lbid. 1018. *lbld. 1035.
*lbid. index sub vof. ; Collector-General of Thirds, 1561, f. 69; Knox,
ii. 298.
7Sr. Cal. i. p. 563.
8Cf. Ibid. 1081 ; Sim. Cal. i. 143 ; For. Cal. iv. 713, 717, 750
The Earl of Arran and Queen Mary 273
be augmented : Arran was coming to take her.1 Randolph
saw no signs of a plot. Lord James, on his return, immediately
discharged the watch. Yet the story of a plan to kidnap the
Queen continued in circulation. In January, 1562, she had
twelve halberdiers, and proposed to double the number.2
Arran's position had become intolerable ; and there is little
wonder that he turned his eyes towards France, where political
and religious controversy was coming to a head. There could
be no doubt of Mary's ineradicable dislike and suspicion ; but
neither she nor anyone else in Scotland cared to let him go. In
December there had been a scandal. One of Mary's uncles,
with Bothwell and Lord John Stewart, raided the house of an
Edinburgh burgess which Arran was said to visit in pursuit of
an intimacy with a young woman named Alison Craik. There
were obvious advantages to be gained by compromising this
Protestant champion and laying hands on him.3 The affair
nearly ended in a full-dress battle of the ' Cleanse the Causeway '
sort. For the public peace something must be done.
It was thought that a financial provision for Arran and, if
possible, reconciliation with Bothwell should be arranged. The
Duke was to make an allowance from his liferent interest in the
earldom, and the Queen contribute some position or benefice.4
On January 17 Arran came over from Kinniel to Linlithgow,
where he presented his service to Mary. The interview was
protracted and apparently cordial : Randolph expected soon to
see him great at court.5 In February he attended the wedding
of Lord James, or Mar, as he now became, and showed himself
to the Queen, but had no taste for the festivities, pleading
indisposition. Nor had he ceased to communicate with France.
Mary was annoyed to learn that a messenger had embarked
without her knowledge or permission.6
The root of the trouble was in Bothwell and his favour with
Mary. Hatred, fear, and jealousy tormented Arran, and were
unhingeing his mind.7 The Privy Council took the matter up,
and promised protection to the Hamiltons under the Act of
Oblivion.8 Knox was chosen as a suitable peacemaker.9 The
1Knox, ii. 293 ; Sc. Cal. i. 1049. zlbtd. 1049, 1055.
3 Knox, ii. 3i5ff. ; Sc. Cal.-\. 1056. 4 Cf. ibid. 1092.
*lbid. 1071. *lbid. 1077,
7 Buchanan says that Bothwell proposed to Mar, who refused, to destroy the
Hamiltons (Hist. xvii. 29) ; cf. Sc. Cal. i. 1081, 1083.
8 Reg. Privy Council, i. 203. 9 Knox, ii. 322 ff.
274 Professor R. K. Hannay
Reformer was delighted, if a little surprised. He improved the
occasion by advising Bothwell to ' begyn at God ' : set himself
to work ; and after some effort procured a reconciliation on
Tuesday, March 24, at Kirk-o'-Field. The Edinburgh people
were astounded when Arran and Bothwell appeared in company
at the Wednesday sermon in St. Giles* ; while the Queen herself
thought the sudden cordiality a little suspicious. On Thursday
they dined together, and rode over to Kinniel with Gavin
Hamilton, Abbot of Kilwinning, to see the Duke. Next day
Arran was at Knox's lodging with an advocate and the town
clerk.1 He was betrayed, he said, bursting into tears : Bothwell
proposed to slay Mar and Lethington and carry off the Queen
for him to Dumbarton — a plot to involve him in a charge of
treason. He would write to Mary at once.
Knox, who suspected insanity, tried to soothe him. Better
to hold his tongue. If he had repudiated the scheme, Bothwell
would never risk laying an accusation. This advice Arran
rejected, wrote his letter, and returned to Kinniel.2 The Queen's
reply, directed thither and confirming him in his honourable
purpose, fell into the hands of the Duke. There was a stormy
scene between father and son. The latter retired or was con-
fined to his chamber. There he wrote in cipher to Randolph at
Falkland : made a rope of his bed-sheets and other stuff : after
dark descended from his window, a considerable height : walked
up the south bank of the Forth to Stirling, and so round to Hall-
yards, the house of Kirkaldy of Grange at Auchtertool, where
he appeared on Tuesday morning, exhausted.8
On Monday, meanwhile, the Queen had taken the field with
Mar, Lethington and Randolph. The cipher was delivered to
Randolph, who was able to make it out from memory, was some-
what staggered, gave the substance to Mar and, at his desire, to
Mary. As they conferred, the Abbot of Kilwinning rode up
from the Duke. No weight need be given to this fabrication.
Within an hour after the Abbot had been placed in custody,
Bothwell came in with a similar story, and shared his fate. Next
morning Kirkaldy brought word that Arran was at Hallyards —
had been raving ' as of divels, witches, and suche lyke,' in mortal
1 Alex. Guthrie, who had been town clerk for some years, was at present acting
as dean of guild (Extracts etc. Burgh of Edinburgh, 1557-71, 302).
2 Randolph makes him write from Kinniel on Saturday (Sc. Cal. i. 1089). He
also says that Knox advised revelation (1090).
3 The details are derived from Randolph (Sf. Cal.} and Knox.
The Earl of Arran and Queen Mary 275
dread of violent death. Mar rode over and brought him to
Falkland, where he saw for himself — what Knox had already
written to him — that the Earl was insane, under the hallucination
that he was the Queen's husband.
On Wednesday, April i, the day of the full ' erection ' of the
body-guard, the court passed to St. Andrews, Bothwell and
Kilwinning sent on before to the Castle, Arran taken in the
Queen's company.
What was to be made of the whole business ? As Arran
gradually recovered it seems to have dawned on him that in his
frenzy of hate for Bothwell he had compromised his own father.
Randolph was sent to see him, and found him ' in all common
purposes ' perfectly sensible, but unsatisfactory on the subject
of the plot. Mary herself paid a visit, and asked him to tell the
truth. Yes, he would — if she would marry him. There must
be no conditions, she replied : he must justify his letters or own
that he did wrong in writing.1 Reading Livy with George
Buchanan one afternoon, the Queen came upon a saying which
struck her as apposite : ' safer not to accuse a bad man than to
accuse him and see him absolved.' 2 Still an effort was made to
get to the bottom of the affair. In presence of the Council
Arran insisted on the charge against Bothwell, and was prepared
for single combat or a trial, whichever the Queen preferred : the
accusation against his father He withdrew without qualification.
A second examination was no more successful. The Duke now
summoned up courage to appear at St. Andrews, wept before the
Queen like a beaten child, and denied the whole thing in Council.
So it was resolved to take the opportunity of obtaining the
surrender of Dumbarton Castle, and to go no further. Only,
as Randolph said, Arran was ' not yet like to escape.' Mary
had no justification for taking his life ; but she would not be
content without ' good assurance.' 3
That assurance she obtained. Arran was conveyed to Edin-
burgh Castle, kindly enough, in the Queen's coach ; 4 and there
he remained for four weary years, suffering for the sins of his
house as much as for his own. A week or two after his arrival,
he had a visit from Mar and Morton. They found him, said
Randolph, ' in good health, his wits serving him as well as ever
they did,' and eager to be at liberty ; but liberation was not
expedient.5 Mar, it would appear, distrusted the Hamiltons
1Sf. Cal. i. 1090. *Ibid. * Ibid. 1095.
* Diurnal of Occurrents. 5Sf. Cal. i. im.
276 The Earl of Arran and Queen Mary
too deeply to dispense with a hostage.1 In the spring of 1563
Randolph definitely exculpated Lethington, and left Cecil to
infer that Mar — or Moray, to be exact — was chiefly responsible.2
Yet in him, the old comrade in arms, the captive had a pathetic
faith. ' My lorde,' he wrote, ' I am here in daynger of my lyf
for revelinge the treason ment agaynst the Quenes Majestic and
yourself : therefore succour me.' ' Have compassion on me as
ye would God should have on you, my lord my brother ; for so
long as I live I shall be true to you, as you have some experience.' 5
In December, 1563, he attacked his attendant : in 1564 he was
seriously ill, but in the autumn his father found him well,
melancholy, patient, desirous of liberty. The unfortunate man's
freedom was still inexpedient. Catherine de Medici had not
ceased to regard him as a possible husband for Mary, or to hope
that he might return to the faith and take vengeance on Moray.4
Twice in January, 1565, the Queen dined at the Castle — just
before Darnley came .upon the scene. The first time Arran did
not ask to see her : the second, she spoke with him and kissed
him, but his words were few, * scarce so much as remission for his
offence or desire for liberty.' In summer he was ill again, and
suicidal : in autumn, worse : by the early spring of 1566 he had
lost his speech.5
At the beginning of May, 1566, the long durance ended.6
Mary was already in the Castle, expecting the birth of an heir.
Moray and Argyll, restored after the Riccio affair and ready now
to conciliate the Hamiltons, became sureties in a large sum for
Arran's behaviour.7 He departed to his house, and to com-
parative obscurity till his death in 1609. And yet he was not
entirely forgotten. In 1580, when the Hamiltons had been
forfeited, we read among the articles of supplication presented by
the General Assembly to James VI. : * that in respect of the good
and godly zeale of James Lord Arran, alwayes showed in
defence of God's caus and commoun wealth, it will please your
Hienesse and counsell to resolve upon some good and substantiall
order, which may serve both for health and curing of his bodie
and comfort of his conscience.' 8
R. K. HANNAY.
1129. zlbU. 1171. *lbid. 1174.
4 Hay Fleming, Mary, Queen of Scots, 94. 5Sf. Cal. ii. passim.
6 Collector-General's Accounts, 1565 ; the Diurnal has April 26.
7Sf. Cal. ii. 378; DlurtialofOccnrrents. 8 Calderwood, iii. 467.
An Old Scottish Handicraft Industry
THE earliest mention of hand knitting in England appears
to be a statute, passed in the reign of Henry IV.,1 but
no early records of the handicraft in Scotland are found. In
1564 the Register of the Privy Council of Scotland contains
references to the importation of stockings ; but coarse woollen
ones were no doubt spun and knitted at home from much earlier
times. The stocking frame, which was invented by Lee during
the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was rapidly taken up in England
and the industry localised at London and at Nottingham ; but
no knitting machinery was introduced in Scotland until 1773,
although there had been a considerable export trade in knitted
stockings for over a hundred years before that date.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Aberdeenshire
was peculiarly suited for the development of a handicraft industry.
Owing to its troublous history, the system of land tenure in the
northern part of Scotland was still largely feudal,2 for as late
as 1745 the power of a Highland chief depended upon the
following of men he was able to bring into the field. Although
the greater part of the county is Lowland in population and in
the character of the terrain, it borders the Highlands proper and
was therefore subjected to constant raids and spreachs : cattle
lifting was only systematically put down after the '45, and the
county was the scene of several pitched battles such as Harlaw
and the fight on the braes of Corrichie. It was natural that the
local landowners should have lived in semi-fortified houses and
encouraged as large a ' tail ' of retainers as their land could
support, until about the end of the seventeenth century or even
later.3
1 David Bremner, Industries of Scotland, p. 172.
2Matheson, Awakening of Scotland, pp. 17-18, also 278-9. Meikle, Scotland and
the French Revolution, p. 9.
3 Report on the Agriculture of Scotland (to the International Agricultural Congress,
Paris, 1878). Watt, County History of Banff and Aberdeenshire, pp. 293-4 ; see also
chapters ii. and ix.
278 An Old Handicraft Industry
The exceedingly wasteful system of agriculture — known as
the ' runrig ' — which was almost universal in Aberdeenshire
down to nearly the end of the eighteenth century, also tended to
encourage a large rural population whilst1 producing little to
maintain it.
Aberdeenshire was like many other parts of Scotland in having
a population too numerous for the land to support 2 adequately,
but she was more fortunate in her closeness to foreign markets.
Scotland was at that time both poverty-stricken and backward ; 3
rents and wages were largely paid in kind ; the population was
principally agricultural, raising and preparing its own wool and
flax, spinning and if need be dyeing the yarns at home, and
employing a local weaver to turn them into tweels (coarse diagonal
cloth),4 linen and blankets. The great industries of shipbuilding,
iron work, tweed manufacture and others were in embryo.5
There was therefore neither a wealthy middle class nor a large
artisan population to buy the produce of the countryside. An
industry was thus dependent on export for any market beyond
immediate domestic consumption, and so elementary were the
means of inland communication that easy access to a port was a
necessity in order to carry on such a trade. Lack of means of
communication is given by Mr. F. Mill, Perthill Factory,
Aberdeen,6 as the reason why the stocking industry did not
spread through the interior of Scotland, and the history of the
linen trade bears out this statement. All through the eighteenth
century it slowly spread to less and less accessible places ; and
even during the boom, just before spinning machinery had
become widely known, it had barely reached the remoter parts
of the Highlands.
But Aberdeenshire was well situated in respect that the
town of Aberdeen was the second or third largest port in the
1 Alexander, Northern Rural Life in the Eighteenth Century, ch. iv. and p. 19.
2 Scott, Preface to Rob Roy. Watt, County History of Aberdeenshire, pp. 293-4.
3 Graham, Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, ch. i. and v.
4 Bremner, Industries of Scotland, p. 146. Memoirs of a Highland Lady, Mrs.
Smith (nee Miss Grant of Rothiemurcus), p. 180. Transactions of the Highland
Society, vol. ii. p. 244.
5 Bremner, Industries of Scotland, pp. 32, 58, 145. Aberdeen Daily Journal,
1 4th August, 1920.
6 A linen manufacturer who had been largely instrumental in opening up the
Highland flax spinning industry, had travelled widely in the north of Scotland
and won one of the gold medals offered by the Highland Society in 1 799 for an
essay on the development of Highland industries.
in the North of Scotland 279
kingdom,1 and had an important trading connection with
Holland and Germany.
Stonehaven in the southernmost part of the stocking-making
country, also had a harbour and was renowned for its smuggling
activities. Although roads were bad or non-existent, the central
northern and coastwise parts of the country are open and un-
dulating, and even in the seventeenth century were constantly
traversed by peddlers.
The stocking-knitting industry sprang into activity very
rapidly in the second half of the seventeenth century. A Report
on the Revenues of Excise and Customs in Scotland in
1656 gives particulars of the export of a considerable quantity
of coarse plaiding from Aberdeen, but makes no mention of the
stocking trade. But in 1676 the industry was already estab-
lished in the county, and Mr. Pyper, the principal merchant
engaged in it,2 employed four hundred women to knit and spin
for him, and encouraged good workmanship by gifts of money
or linen — ' so that from five groats a pair he caused them to
work at such fynness that he hath given 2os. sterling and upward
for the pair.'
The industry must have been widely distributed by 1680, for
in a letter written in that year and attributed to the Lady Errol
of the day, the following passage occurs : ' The women of this
country are mostly employed spinning and working of stockings
and making of plaiden webs, which the Aberdeen merchants carry
over the sea ; it is this which bringeth money to the commons ;
other ways of getting it they have not.'
Five years later Bailie Alexander Skene of Newtile also
mentions the trade. He says that the Aberdeen merchants
brought the wool from the south of Scotland and sold it out in
* smalls ' to the country people, who spun it and either wove it
into fingrams or plaidings or knitted it into stockings.
These quotations taken together suggest that sometimes the
workers were employed on commission and sometimes did their
own purchasing and selling. As late as 1745 James Rae, in
his History of the Rebellion, writing of Aberdeen says : * The
manufacture here is chiefly of stockings, all round the adjacent
country, and every morning women bring in loads to sell about
the town to merchants, who have them scoured for exportation
1 Watt, History of Aberdeenshire, pp. 309-14.
2 Writings of Bailie Skene of Neiutile, quoted by Alexander in Northern Rural
Life, p. i 34.
280 An Old Handicraft Industry
to London, Hamburgh and Holland. They are generally all
white from the makers and knit most plainly ; some are ribbed
and a great many with squares which greatly please the Dutch.'
Another method of disposal was by means of the peddlers, who
were a numerous and prosperous class at that time : Sir Henry
Craik estimates that there were 2000 in Scotland in 1707 with
' considerable capital.' x
A series of letters between one of these chapmen and his wife
is still preserved. They are undated, but from internal evi-
dence must have been written during the first half of the
eighteenth century. The chapman was in the habit of travelling
through the northern part of Kincardineshire, exchanging tea and
other luxuries for eggs, butter and stockings, whilst his wife looked
after their shop in Stonehaven and their little croft close by.
Every now and then he crossed over to Holland to buy stock.
Both Pennant and Francis Douglas, who travelled up the east
coast towards the end of the century, only mention stockings
worked on commission.
All authorities seem to agree that most of the wool used for
stockings was brought from the South, which is not surprising,
as neither Aberdeenshire nor the Highlands were at that time
wool-raising countries. But a limited amount of the local ' tarry
wool ' was sent South to be treated and then brought back, and
it has been suggested that it was of these fleeces of the fine scanty
wool of the original highland sheep 2 that the very fine stockings
were made, for which Pyper paid twenty shillings a pair, and
similar ones which at a later date fetched four or even five times
this sum. In the earlier accounts the wool was carded and spun
by the women, originally with the rock or distaff, but after 1712
four times as quickly with the spinning wheel. By the 3 latter
half of the century the merchants had begun to give out the
wool ready spun, and it is probable that from the beginning of
the nineteenth century they bought the wool ready for knitting
in the great wool-spinning centres of the south of Scotland.
There was considerable variety in the quality of the stockings
made. Rae wrote that * They make stockings here in common
from one shilling a pair to one guinea and a half, and some are
*As early as 1695, 500 merks was not an unusual amount of capital for a
peddler.
2 Before the introduction of the coarse, long-fleeced blackfaced or more recently
of the Cheviot.
3 Alexander, Northern Rural Life in the Eighteenth Century, p. 135.
in the North of Scotland 281
so fine as to sell for five guineas the pair.' Pennant says that
the rate of payment in northern Kincardineshire was about
fourpence a day, and several travellers put the rate of production
at two pairs to two and a half pairs per week. Douglas notes
that the very fine stockings worth £3 to £4 a pair took a woman
nearly six months to knit, if she worked constantly. By the end
of the century earnings were said to average from two shillings
to half-a-crown per week. It would appear, from the authorities
quoted, and from the minister of Raynes' contribution to the
first Statistical Account, 1792, that it was quite usual for the
people to pay their rents by what they earned by knitting
stockings ; no doubt they subsisted upon the produce of their
farms or crofts.
In 1779 Mr. Wright, in his report to the Commissioners of
the Annexed Estates in Aberdeenshire, writes that ' the women
are so well employed in knitting stockings as scarce to undertake
field work, even at sixpence,' and that the demand for knitters
had raised servants' wages.1 Mr. Wright described how the
women knitted as they walked along the roads, and Pennant
states that although they might have earned a penny a day more
at flax spinning they preferred knitting as it left them freer to
move about.
In the second half of the eighteenth century the industry had
become strongly localised. Kincardineshire was divided ; in
the south the women all span flax, probably largely home-grown,
for the good soil of the Mearns was well adapted for that ' scourg-
ing crop.' The northern part of the county was at that time
very barren, and the stocking industry reigned supreme. Aber-
deen itself was one of the principal spinning centres in the
kingdom. In 1745 the Board of Trustees had given a grant
towards 2 a spinning school and the wives and daughters of the
artisans were soon filling spindles by the thousand. A certain
amount of surplus yarn was produced in some parts of the
county, as for instance in the Peterhead district, which afterwards
started a thread industry of its own ; but on the whole the women
remained faithful to their worsted stockings, and the Aberdeen
1 This is especially noticeable, for nearly all travellers in Scotland writing in the
eighteenth century have commented on how much more field work the women
were accustomed to do than in England. Simond likened them to the French
peasant women, and an anonymous writer has recorded his disgust at seeing
women carrying manure on their backs to the fields.
2D. Bremner, Industries of Scotland, p. 228.
282 An Old Handicraft Industry
weavers drew most of their supplies from Moray, Ross and
above all Caithness.
In Huntly many silk stockings were knitted, and Aberdeen
also carried on this trade to a certain extent. Later on, when
the spinning of weft had spread to Caithness, Aberdeen specialised
in thread making, and Banff and Banffshire, to the immediate
north of the stocking-making country, became even more eminent
for their linen thread, which they exported to Nottingham for
lace and thread stocking making.
Between 1750 and 1795 seems to have been the most pros-
perous time in the stocking industry. In 1771 there were
twenty-two mercantile houses in Aberdeen engaged in it. In
1782 Douglas estimates that the annual value of the trade was
£i 10,000 or £120,000 and that of this sum the merchants paid
out about two-thirds for spinning and knitting, the remaining
third being the cost of the material and profit. Pennant, writing
a few years later, gives rather different figures, ' Aberdeen imports
annually £20,800 worth of wool and £16,000 worth of oil. Of
this wool are made 69,333 dozen pairs of stockings, worth an
average of £i los. a dozen, for knitting. These are made by
country people in almost all parts of the county, who are paid
45. per dozen for spinning and 145. per dozen for knitting, so
that £62,400 is paid annually in the shape of wages. About
£2,000 worth of stockings are made annually from wool grown
in the country.' A writer quoted by Professor Scott in his
Report to the Board of Agriculture for Scotland on the Home
Industries in the Highlands and Islands estimates the value of
the stockings exported from Aberdeen at £80,000 in 1758 and
at £200,000 in 1784.
Sir John Sinclair, in his Statistical Abstract of Scotland,
written in 1795, Puts t^ie annual value of the trade at between
£70,000 and £90,000 per annum. He says the payment given
to the women varied as a rule between tenpence and two shillings
per pair of stockings according to size and fineness, and that they
usually knitted two pairs or two and a half pairs a week.
At that date the manufacturers usually went round the country
every four weeks, giving out the raw material and receiving back
the finished goods. * Had it not been for this employment,
occupiers of small lots of land would not have been able to pay
their rents, having hardly any other mode of earning money.'
This important trade, unlike other eighteenth century industries,
seems to have been built up entirely without the aid of bounties,
in the North of Scotland 283
protective tariffs, subsidies or philanthropic assistance. It is
true that during the reign of George II. an Act was passed pro-
viding that ' all stockings that shall be made l in Scotland shall
be wrought of three threads, and of one sort of wool and worsted,
and of equal work and fineness throughout, free of all left loops,
hanging hairs, and of burnt, cutted or mended holes, and of
such shapes and sizes respectively as shall be marked by the
several Deans of Guild of the chief Burghs of the respective
counties.' But the Board of Manufactures was never entrusted
with the careful supervision of the stockings, such as they exer-
cised over the linens. In 1789 the newly established Highland
Society offered a gold medal to the proprietor who ' shall have
brought and settled on his estate, a person properly qualified to
prepare the wool and knit and teach the knitting of stockings
made of such wool, after the Aberdeen or Shetland method or
both, and on whose estate the greatest quantity of stockings
shall be made in proportion to the number of inhabitants.'
Prizes were also offered for the knitting of stockings, but the
time of prosperity for the handknit stocking merchants was
nearly over and many causes combined to bring about a decline
in the trade.
One of the most direct causes was the closing of the continental
market. The Central European War diminished the demand
for stockings, and in 1795 wnen z France obtained the ascendancy
she closed the Dutch ports to Scottish trade. The home market
for knitted goods had however improved. Scotland had become
a much richer country and a flourishing industrial life was
rapidly developing. There can have been but little demand for
better class women's stockings ; for even school-girls with any
pretensions to gentility only wore worsted hose in the mornings
and when there was no ' company ' present ; 3 and all through
the eighteenth century the lower classes in Scotland mostly wore
linen underware.4 Still a certain amount of trade grew up in
fishermen's jerseys, in Kilmarnock bonnets and in hosiery for
the home market.
A more serious rival had entered upon the field in the form
of the Hawick frame-made stocking industry.
The first stocking frame was introduced from England in
1 Alexander, Northern Rural Life in the Eighteenth Century, p. 139.
2 Watt, County History of Aberdeenshire, p. 320.
3 An old letter in the possession of Col. Grant, C.B., Muchalls Castle.
4 Mrs. Smith, Memoirs of a Highland Lady, p. 1 89.
284 An Old Handicraft Industry
1771 by Bailie John Hardy.1 So rapidly did the industry grow
that by 1812 there were 1449 frames in that town and by 1844
there were 2605 frames in Scotland; but the machine industry
did not tend to establish itself in the handknitting country, for
no frames had, at that date, been introduced into Aberdeen or
the county, and with the exception of 108 at Perth they were
all south of the Forth.
But the local industry was not only affected by loss of a market
and the introduction of machinery. The whole system of
agriculture was undergoing a radical change and the rural popula-
tion was correspondingly affected.2 Enclosure, systematic
drainage, scientific manuring, the introduction of the turnip, and
with it five or seven shift rotations of crops were having a cumu-
lative effect upon farming. Struggling tenants were giving
place to the well-trained working farmer employing two or three
or more full-time farm servants.
Better housing and metal agricultural implements gave em-
ployment to craftsmen specialised in the necessary trades, and
the new industries developing in the towns tended to divert
labour from the land. Mere figures do not represent the com-
pleteness of the change, for if the numbers of labourers on
existing farms were reduced, many more were required to
cultivate the new land that was reclaimed from the waste and to
bring the * outfield ' portions of the older farms under regular
tillage. The 1845 Statistical Account contains constant reference
to the great alterations, and many writers comment on the
economy of labour introduced by the new system.
The decline in the flax-spinning industry, which took place
about this time, affected many districts, notably Banffshire and 3
Caithness, where there was difficulty in finding workers willing
to spin at the old rates. In Orkney the competition of machines
killed the trade a few years later. And the very rapid adoption
of spinning machinery rather points to shortage of hand workers,
if it is compared with the leisurely progress of the power-loom,
when there was a large supply of hand-loom workers.4 In
Ayrshire, which is largely a dairy country, the Glasgow spinning
mills did cause unemployment, but the surplus home workers
were quickly diverted to hand embroidery.5
1 D. Bremner, Industries of Scotland, p. 1 74.
1 Alexander, Northern Rural Life, pp. 4-6.
3D. Bremner, Industries of Scotland, pp. 225, 227.
p. 233, etc. *I6ut. p. 306.
in the North of Scotland 285
There was however a considerably greater number of women
workers upon the land than at present. Before the invention
of the automatic binder, the turnip driller and other newer
machines, women were constantly to be seen working in the
fields in Aberdeenshire.1 In certain parts of the country the
rural conditions were also slightly abnormal, and it is in those
districts that the stocking industry survived longest. The new
Statistical Account published in 1845 states that in eleven out
of forty-four parishes of Aberdeenshire and in the northernmost
parish of Kincardineshire there was a considerable manufacture
of stockings. They formed a fairly large group in the northern
part of Aberdeenshire, but one or two are scattered further south.
Fetteresso, in Kincardineshire, has poor soil, and at that time
the richer portions nearer the coast were largely undrained,
unfenced and divided up into uneconomically small holdings.2
Alford and Tough were at that time much cut off from the outside
world. The former was very backward, and an unusual number
of women were employed on the land. The stocking trade did
not amount to more than £200 per annum, but there was hand
spinning for a local weaver of tweeds. In the adjoining parish
of Tough the larger farms were said to be good, but the many
small crofts were backward, and the minister writes, ' A number
of the females employ themselves in knitting stockings for a
mercantile house in Aberdeen. The worsted is furnished to
them at their own houses, and they are paid for their work at the
rate of 3^d. or 4d. a pair. About 3,000 pairs of excellent
worsted stockings are in this manner made in the parish yearly.'
The parish of Birse also has a poor soil and consists of rough
hilly ground ; at that time it was mostly divided into crofts.
Curiously enough the industry had not only survived, but had
reverted to an earlier form. The women bought their own wool
locally, had it carded at a mill and spun and knitted it themselves.
' Though the profits in this manufacture be extremely small,
yet it affords occupation to a great many females who would
otherwise be idle, and furnishes a ready employment for frag-
ments of time. A very expert female will spin and knit a pair
of stockings in two days. For these she receives generally from
a shilling to fifteen pence when brought to market, of which sum,
however, not more than one half is the remuneration for her
1 Many older people resident locally have commented to me on the change.
2 A pamphlet written by Mr. Paul, late factor to the Muchalls estates, and
privately circulated.
T
286 An Old Handicraft Industry
labour, the other half being the price of wool, carding, and
spinning. One individual will manufacture about three stones
and a half of wool in a year, out of which she will produce from
120 to 1 30 pairs of stockings. Few of the females so employed
are entirely dependent on this work for their subsistence, the
profit of it being scarcely sufficient for this purpose. Many of
them are partly employed in outdoor labour, where they can earn
higher wages. In times however when such is not to be had,
or when the season does not admit of it, or when age and infir-
mities have debarred them from it, the stockings are the never-
failing resource. And so much is this the habitual employment
of the females, especially the elder and unmarried, that, if a
person were to go into the dwelling of such and find the shank
absent from her hands, he might regard it as an unfailing symptom
of indisposition.' l
In the northern part of the county, where the stocking industry
was more generally prevalent, there is much bleak upland country,
especially in the Cabrach district, and on the upper reaches of
the Ythan and Urie. Fyvie and Rayne, in addition, showed
great disparity in the size of their holdings, which varied from
crofts to farms of 300 acres, and both these extremes tended to
produce knitters ; in the case of the crofts, a subsidiary employ-
ment to eke out subsistence was welcomed ; the larger farms at
that time employed several women field workers, who generally
lived together in a sort of barrack on the bothy system and
having no home occupations knitted in the evenings. Old
Meldrum, which lies in lower country, was rather more industrial
in character, and had a considerable number of hand-looms,
which at that time were no doubt feeling the competition of the
factories.
In almost every parish the industry is spoken of as a declining
one in the middle of the nineteenth century. The younger
women were said to be giving it up, only the old and less able-
bodied, who were fit for nothing else, being said to carry it on
in Kennethmont, Leochel and Cushnie, and Turrif. In Kieg,
where 5000 pairs were made every year, it was evidently carried
on by the married women, for the minister remarks, ' It may be
observed that this is an employment which does not interrupt
their attention to many of their domestic concerns in or out of
doors.'
Most of the writers attribute the decline to the poorness of
1 Nftv Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. xii. p. 786, 1845.
in the North of Scotland 287
the wages paid, the minister of Methlic saying that payment
had been reduced from two shillings or three shillings per pair
to fourpence halfpenny. But in this case there was probably
a change in the work performed, for he says himself that the
earlier rates were for spinning and knitting, whereas in 1845 the
woman was probably only required to knit. The average
payments seem to have varied from threepence halfpenny to
fivepence a pair and weekly earnings were calculated at a shilling
or eighteen pence per week. The industry had in fact reached
a typical stage in the history of home-handicrafts and the Report
of the House of Commons Select Committee on Home Work,
written in 1907 and referring to other industries in other parts
of the United Kingdom, contains a passage that might exactly
describe it : ' As the payment for Home Work is necessarily at
piece rates, those who are slow, owing to age, feeble health,
inexperience, incompetence, or lack of power, energy, or dis-
position to work, and those who for any reason find it difficult
to secure and retain employment elsewhere, find it more easy to
obtain this kind of work than any other, and they drift into it and
settle down to it as a method of earning a livelihood.'
In 1 845 there were nine hosiery merchants in Aberdeen,1 and,
with the exception of Birse, the work seems to have been invari-
ably given out by agents, who visited the country districts every
month, receiving and paying for the stockings and supplying
more wool.
In the very early years of the nineteenth century the first
representative of one of the largest and best known stocking
firms settled at Huntly. His great-grandchildren still preserve
one of his daybooks, dated 1812, and describe how he used to
drive about in all weathers, in a dogcart, in the bleak upland
districts round the Buck o* the Cabroch, giving out and collecting
the work, which he shipped to London.
By about 1880 gloves and socks were the articles most usually
made, and the industry had shrunk to the district immediately
round Fyvie. Only one or two merchants were engaged in the
trade, who employed collectors to call at the small scattered
hamlets. They gave out the wool with directions how it was to
be used, and in most of the villages there were groups of women,
under the charge of the most experienced knitter. They were
all widows or single women too old to work in the fields, who
supplemented the ' Parish Money,' or what little pittance their
1 Statistical Account, 1845, p. 39.
288 An Old Handicraft Industry
families or savings brought them in, by their earnings at knitting.
An old man who used to be employed as a collector has told me
that the usual rate of payment was eightpence for a pair of gloves.
The picture he gave of the knitters' life was far from unattractive ;
in the afternoons and evenings they usually met to work together,
and they would sit round the fire, while one member of the party
was always employed in keeping the kettle boiling and the teapot
replenished after its frequent rounds, and although the earnings
seem scanty according to modern standards it must be remem-
bered that the agents only earned about £i a week, and a woman
field worker usually received £1 per half year in addition to board
and lodging.
No figures are available giving the exact amount of output,
but up till about thirty years ago the industry continued in the
Fyvie district to quite a considerable extent. About that time
the fashion in knitted goods began to change, and lighter, thinner
fabrics were preferred. The machinery used in the south had
also been improved and was more fit to produce highly finished
articles. Messrs. Spence therefore decided to build a factory at
Huntly to cope with the growing demand, although they
continued to employ a certain number of out-workers on the
heavier hand-knitted articles and upon sock-making up till 1914.
The more highly skilled work of knitting fancy hose tops con-
tinued to be a handicraft long after the shanks were usually
machine knit. This branch of the industry was carried on by
a comparatively few skilled knitters scattered over the county,
and indeed beyond its borders. About ten years ago these
elaborate tops ceased to be admired and much plainer stockings
came into fashion and the fine fleecy hose which are now preferred
can be better knit by machinery than by hand.
The practice of knitting socks for home consumption is also
on the wane. About fifteen years ago every ' auld wifie ' and
most younger women wore leather belts with a pad covered with
perforated leather into which they could stick their knitting
needles when they were not in use, but nowadays this is less
common.
The final blow to the industry came through the War. Special
sock machines were introduced to meet the sudden demand, and
only about forty home hand-workers are now employed round
about Huntly. Their work is entirely subsidiary to the machines,
seaming the sides and the backs of the stockings, making the
little tassels for ' rat-tailed ' garters, and doing similar work.
in the North of Scotland 289
This work is well paid, and although the home-workers, who are
mostly girls who have left the factory to be married, seldom * sit
at their work,' their earnings often amount to more than two
pounds per week. The old industry has not deteriorated in its
change from hand-work to machine-made goods, for under the
older conditions the beautiful textures of Lhama and Khashmere
wool and the exquisite modern dyes were not available. And
the newest machinery is so skilful and so much under the control
of the worker that with a smoother finish it almost gives that sense
of personality and distinction that the human hand alone can
produce.
ISABEL F. GRANT.
Reviews of Books
THE POETICAL WORKS OF SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER, Earl of Stirling.
Edited by L. E. Kastner, M.A., Professor of French Language and
Literature, and H. B. Charlton, M.A., Lecturer in English Litera-
ture— Volume the First. The Dramatic Works, with an introductory
essay on the growth of the Senecan tradition in Renaissance tragedy.
Pp. ccxviii, 482. With Portrait. 8vo. Manchester : at the University
Press. 1921. 28s.
IT is a pleasure to handle and read this substantial volume, well printed on
thick paper with adequate margin. The Manchester University Press are
to be congratulated upon the publication, and these congratulations must be
extended to the Scottish Text Society, without whose co-operation, as the
Editors inform us, an edition on this scale of Sir William Alexander's works
would hardly have been possible.
The present volume includes only his tragedies ; a second will follow and
complete his works. Nearly one-half of the volume is occupied with an
introduction which embodies a learned and critically exact exposition of the
history of tragedy, not so much from its origin in the great Greek dramatists,
as from its new birth in the tragedies of Seneca. The overpowering sense
of fate, of divine retribution in the Greek tragedies, the lurid atmosphere of
spiritual nemesis, inspiring religous awe and terror, disappear in the Senecan
tragedies, and in their place a climax not of supernatural terror, but of human
ruin and horror, is reached ; and reached after much brilliant rhetoric
and abundant moralizing upon the brevity of life, and the uncertainty of
the affairs of mortals.
In the Renaissance in France and Italy it was easier to follow tragedies
written in Latin than those written in Greek, and the Church, moreover,
discovered in Seneca much admirably expressed philosophy as to the transi-
toriness of earthly things, and the ruin that inevitably engulfed all evildoers ;
a philosophy which they could easily adapt to medieval tastes and habits of
thought, and which might produce upon the vulgar those religious im-
pressions which the Church desired to inspire and intensify. The Senecan
tradition, therefore, rather than the Greek was taken up and carried on in
these countries, as well as in our own. Indeed one of the most interesting
chapters in the introduction deals with the Senecan tradition in the history
of English tragedy in the sixteenth century, and the influence of France and
of Italy upon English writers during that period. As regards Alexander's
Monarchicke Tragedies the editors sum them up as being * final crystallisation
of all the tendencies of Seneca of the French school'; and certainly
Kastner: Works of Sir William Alexander 291
one can see that between Euripides and Alexander there is a great gulf
fixed.
Alexander was born in Menstrie near Alloa about 1570. He was
educated in Stirling and at the University of Glasgow ; he travelled on the
continent with the seventh Earl of Argyll : he became a member of the
household of Prince Henry, son of James I. ; he was knighted ; obtained a
grant not only of Nova Scotia but of what is now Canada and a great part
of the United States : he attempted much and effected little in the encourage-
ment of the colonization of his vast territory : he was created a Viscount
and afterwards Earl of Stirling : he was an able and vigorous administrator
in many offices of State, and in particular was for many years and until his
death Secretary for Scotland. He died in poverty, but honoured and
regretted. His life was largely spent in England, and a part of it in the
times, and doubtless in the society, of the mighty Elizabethans.
His tragedies are contemporaneous with the great romantic tragedies of
Shakespeare. But he was only a minor poet after all. One reason for the
present fine edition of his works is that they do contain some good
poetry ; poetry so good that it was read and admired by Milton. Another
reason is that his tragedies appeared in successive editions during his own
lifetime from 1603-1637, and were carefully revised by himself, his revisions
consisting largely in the expunging of Scottish words and phrases and of
archaic, provincial and pedantic words ; these numerous changes show a
* growth in grace ' from a literary point of view over a period of more than
thirty years. The present edition carefully notes the variant forms, so that
the changes of taste not only in the author himself, but doubtless also in others,
during a period of transition from Elizabethan to Jacobean and later ideals
can be traced with great particularity and in a highly interesting way. If
Boswell eliminated his native Scotticisms in pronunciation, so Alexander did
in his style and language in a way which meets the eye and can be
appreciated in the present day. He was a courtier and an author, a man of
affairs and a student, and he liv«d in a period of intense literary life and out-
put. His change of taste, therefore, as shown by his revisions, is more than
a matter of curiosity ; it is a matter of value to all students and especially to
Scottish students of language and style.
Since his death in 1640 his poems have been collected only once, in a
three volume edition limited to 350 copies published in Glasgow in 1870-72,
and an edition like the present, giving an exact reprint of the last edition
issued during the author's lifetime, with all the variant readings, was certainly
called for, and can be recommended to the readers of this Review.
A. S. D. THOMSON.
THE EVOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT. By A. F. Pollard, Litt.D., F.B.A.,
Professor of English History in the University of London. Pp. xi,
398. With illustrations, ovo. London : Longmans, Green & Co.
1920.
PROFESSOR POLLARD has produced a bold, brilliantly-written and iconoclastic
book. Upon its detailed conclusions there is likely to be, for many years
to come, much fruitful discussion, but of its great merits, taken as a whole,
292 Pollard : The Evolution of Parliament
there would seem to be room for one opinion only. This volume will stand
beside Stubbs and Maitland on the shelves of future historians of the Mother
of Parliaments. In forming this opinion it is not forgotten that Professor
Pollard's contribution is not mainly a work of original investigation, that
many researchers have prepared the way for even the most seemingly revolu-
tionary of his conclusions or that, on the other hand, some of his modifications
of long-accepted conclusions imply changes of nomenclature rather than of
substance. Still, after fully weighing all such considerations, a distinct im-
pression remains that Professor Pollard (by the convincing deductions which
he now bases on a new synthesis of the results of the recent researches of
himself and of others) has thrown the whole subject of the development of
Parliament back into the crucible again. The consequences are likely to
be far-reaching, hardly one of our complacently accepted conclusions escapes
the necessity of justifying its form, or indeed its very existence anew.
Of the great debt owed by students of British medieval institutions to
Bishop Stubbs all competent authorities are agreed, and the passage of time
merely increases the sense of obligation, yet it need not be forgotten that
the excessive, if fully deserved, veneration for all conclusions associated with
the honoured name of Bishop Stubbs has interfered with the reconstruction
of English constitutionary history upon lines suggested by researches made
possible only by his own achievements. The mass of evidence for parlia-
mentary origins accumulated by numerous scholars, deriving inspiration
directly or indirectly from Stubbs himself, has been too often used with
timidity where it seemed to contradict conclusions drawn by him from
premises less complete. Even the clear vision of a Maitland would seem
to have been dimmed at times by gratitude and reverence towards his
master. Yet the growing mass of evidence has been pressing with ever-
increasing weight against the barriers, and at last the dam has burst. Mr.
Pollard, writing with all due modesty and moderation, has carefully sifted
and put together the whole mass of new material, and it is no longer safe
to repeat the most cherished of the old propositions without verifying them
anew. The views of Stubbs will henceforth require to be supplemented,
in giving instruction even to the tyro, by those of Professor Pollard.
It has long been known, for example, that certain dates in the thirteenth
century have received exaggerated importance in their bearing upon the
composition of the English Parliament. Their prominence, in the writings
of Bishop Stubbs, has in many cases been mainly due to accidents which
have preserved, and brought to the surface, one set of writs of summons to
Parliament rather than another. Almost every year, however, of the last
quarter of a century has seen the industry of an increasing band of compe-
tent workers rewarded by the discovery of previously unknown writs.
Emphasis has thus been greatly altered. New dates have become important,
others, once considered crucial, are now relegated to a secondary rank. The
growth of Parliament is seen to be even more of a gradual evolution than
was formerly supposed. In this respect as in many others, it has been left
for Mr. Pollard to give full expression to opinions, long forming, but hitherto
expressed only in a tentative form.
All the old watchwords of English constitutional historians, « the Parlia-
Pollard : The Evolution of Parliament 293
merit of the three estates,' * the two Houses of Parliament,' ' the theory of
ennobled blood,' and the like, have been here subjected to the acid test of a
searching new analysis, and found wanting. For teachers of history, content
to plod along the old paths that constant use has made smooth, this book is
extremely disquieting. Not one of the familiar old stock phrases can be
freely used again without renewed examination, old text-books and lectures
will require to be rewritten. Professor Pollard has probably in places some-
what overstated his case, but, perhaps, his book is none the worse for that ;
as it makes the challenge contained in his propositions the more emphatic
and thus stimulates criticism suited to bring any necessary corrective. He
has not, of course, written the definitive treatise upon the origin arid growth
of Parliament : far from it. What he has done is rather to unsettle all con-
clusions and to render necessary a new start from the foundations. Whether
welcomed or resented, Mr. Pollard's book is one with which all historians
will have seriously to reckon. WM. S. McKECHNiE.
THE IRISH REBELLION OF 1641 : With a History of the Events which
led up to and succeeded it. By Lord Ernest Hamilton. Pp. xviii,
461. 8vo. London : John Murray. 1920. 2 is. net.
IN all the contentious annals of Ireland there is no more thorny tract than
her Seventeenth Century history, and Lord Ernest Hamilton has added
another volume, — an interesting and sometimes useful volume, be it said, —
to the library of controversy. Mainly concerned with the history of Ulster,
he has supplied a clear and able account of such disputatious topics as the
Jacobean Plantation and the Insurrection of 1641 from what I suppose may
be called the orthodox Ulster Unionist point of view. Lord Ernest writes
an excellent straightforward narrative, at its best in detailing the military
operations of the time. His story, encumbered as it is with Celtic patro-
nymics and place names, is terse and vigorous : and were it supplemented, as
it should have been, with a series of sketch maps, it would have supplied
the student of Irish history with a narrative of events clearer and more
comprehensible than most works dealing with the warfare of Seventeenth
Century Ireland.
His account of the Plantation is also a useful summary and his discussion
of its ethics and legality is interesting, though his conclusions seem based on
a too implicit acceptation of the official story and the arguments of official
apologists. Its denunciation of the defects of Ulster tribal society is pro-
bably not exaggerated ; but he does not seem to take into account the fact
that those defects do not in themselves justify Government's dealings with
the native Irish. It claimed the laudable intention of relieving the tribes-
men from 'the oppressions and extortions' of their chieftains and assured
them they were ' free subjects to the King of England,' but having confis-
cated the * free subjects ' land because of the chieftains' suspected treason, it
then handed over the most fertile part of the tribal territory to alien colonists
and the ' free subjects ' found themselves, in Lord Ernest Hamilton's own
phrase (p. 96), l thrown back on the poorer lands.'
But when Lord Ernest Hamilton sets himself to achieve the main purpose
of his book, one is disposed to be more critical. The purpose is nothing less
294 Hamilton : The Irish Rebellion of 1641
than to rescue the true facts about the '41 Rebellion from the misrepresenta-
tions of that notoriously bigoted and partisan historian, the late Mr. Lecky :
and in so doing 'to present the bald truth ... without any whitewashing of either
British or Irish excesses' (Preface, p. vi). This would appear to be necessary,
since Mr. Lecky was disinclined 'to face the truth' (p. 122) — his 'investi-
gation of. . . facts was superficial' (p. 124) — he 'cannot be freed from the
charge of wilfully misleading the public' (p. 125) ; though surprisingly 'his
trained regard for truth forces from him damaging admissions' (p. 127). In
a work which launches such serious charges against a historian of Mr. Lecky's
eminence and reputation, one looks with a more critical eye than one might
otherwise have done for proofs of the writer's historical equipment and
experience, his ability to judge and collate evidence, his familiarity with the
atmosphere and politics of the Seventeenth Century. As a mere fault of
technique, I might adduce his very unsatisfactory method of reference to his
authorities — ' Carte ' and ' Rushworth ' quoted in footnotes without further
specification may be taken as exaggerated examples of a persistent defect.
The apparent readiness to accept the absurd story of a secret understanding
between Ormonde and Sir Phelim O'Neill which accounted for Ormonde's
failure to advance into Ulster after relieving Drogheda in March 1641-2
(p. 231) argues very little for either Lord Ernest Hamilton's capacity to weigh
evidence or his study of his authorities.1 The insinuation on p. 125 that
Lecky suppressed the record of the proceedings at Sir Phelim's trial (which
Miss Hickson only re-discovered in 1 882) is all the more remarkable in that the
evidence supports Lecky's own supposition to which Lord Ernest Hamilton
alludes four pages previously2 that most of the actual massacres were ' acts of
provoked retaliation.' And the elaborate argument on pp. 117-119 designed
to confute Lecky's perfectly true statement that ' the fear of the extirpation of
Catholicism by the Puritan party was one cause of the rebellion ' is vitiated
throughout by failure to recognise what ought to be notorious to a student
of Seventeenth Century history — that the ' Puritan party ' and the Presby-
terian Scots were not identical, even in the eyes of the native Irish. It is as
idle to deny that the^ar, whether justified or not, was one cause of the
1 It is difficult to understand how anyone could treat the story seriously in face
of the documents printed by Carte (Life of Ormonde, Oxford Edn. of 1851, vol. v.
pp. 296 tt seqq.) — particularly Ormonde's Instructions from the Lords Justices of
3 March 1641-2, his letter to them of the gth, theirs to him of the same date, Sir
John Temple to him of the loth, to say nothing of the letter from Ormonde and
his fellow officers to the Lords Justices, dated the 1 1 th.
2 Hickson's Ireland in the Seventeenth Century, vol. i. p. i 59 ft seq. : and the long
abstract of proceedings, vol. ii. pp. i8i-r92. Lord Ernest Hamilton states that
Judge Donnellan summed up the evidence at the trial : Miss Hickson prints the
notes which Lord Ernest Hamilton seems to be quoting as 'the Lord President's
Speech.' The Lord President was of course Sir Gerard Lowther (Bagwell's
Ireland under the Stuarts, ii. pp. 304-305) — a point worth noting, as Lord Ernest
Hamilton attaches some importance to Donnellan's being ' himself an Irishman.'
Not having seen the original MS., I cannot say whether Lord E. Hamilton or Miss
Hickson is in error. Dean Ker, who was present at the trial, says in his « Declaration '
(written in 1681) that Donnellan was one of the judges, but not that he presided.
Hamilton : The Irish Rebellion of 1641 295
Rebellion as it would be to deny that the English Puritans' belief in a vast
Catholic conspiracy to extirpate English Protestantism was one cause of the
Civil War.
It is of course on the famous Depositions, now in the Library of Trinity
College, that Lord Ernest Hamilton chiefly relies in his task of showing the
inaccuracy of Lecky's account of the Rebellion. Whether they are perfect
material from which to reconstruct c the bald truth ' might perhaps be
questioned ; the experience of the years that followed 1914 ought to have
brought home to the historical student the unfathomable depths of credulity
to be found in truthful and honourable people during times of danger, of
alarm, of excitement. The Depositions certainly vary enormously, con-
sidered simply as historical evidence. Some are reliable ; some are worth-
less ; most of them vary between the two extremes, each one containing
information of every degree of the two qualities; and their value in estab-
lishing historical truth depends entirely on the historian's method of using
them. Lord Ernest Hamilton's own account of them is tolerably accurate,
(Preface, pp. vi-vii), though it conveys, I think a false impression of the
proportion of reliable eye witnesses' evidence to mere hearsay, for the greater
part of the Depositions consists of manifest hearsay report, so far as murders
and atrocities are concerned. But Lord Ernest Hamilton, when he comes
to describe the course of the Rebellion in Ulster, neglects the canon of
criticism he himself lays down. He appears to accept every statement that
the Depositions contain — I hope I do him no injustice if I say the Depositions
as printed by Temple and Borlase and Nalson and above all Miss Hickson —
with an entire and undiscriminating impartiality. The cumulative effect
of this uncritical repetition of massacre and atrocity is undoubtedly horrible.
But — to use his own phrase about Mr. Lecky's work, — * it is not history.'
That the Ulster Rebellion was stained by ghastly atrocities admits of no
doubt, and that the Depositions contain many tales only too true in their
frightful details is not to be denied ; but it is equally certain that the general
picture suggested by an uncritical catalogue of the worst of them, such as
Lord Ernest Hamilton provides for his readers, is historically false and un-
trustworthy. It is not an easy matter to ' cross examine ' these long-dead
witnesses ; nevertheless a skilful comparison and collation of the original
depositions can do a great deal to establish truth of detail, as may be seen in a
book which might be commended to Lord Ernest Hamilton's notice — Dr.
Fitzpatrick's collected papers, dealing chiefly with the Rebellion in Co. Down.1
Dr. Fitzpatrick's general conclusions about the Rebellion are just as biassed
as Lord Ernest Hamilton's, though in a different direction, and his style
is not suggestive of reasoned impartiality ; but he has shown how the De-
positions can be made to test one another and what a first-hand examination
and critical analysis of them can do to correct and modify the traditional
story of the Insurrection. Lecky's sketch still remains the most trustworthy
1 The Bloody Bridge^ and other Papers relating to the Insurrection of 1641. By
Thomas Fitzpatrick, LL.D. Dublin, 1903. The 'Bloody Bridge' is near
Newcastle, Co. Down, and Dr. Fitzpatrick's first paper demonstrates conclusively
the inaccuracies of the traditional story of the massacre there in the spring of 1642.
Lord Ernest Hamilton repeats all the inaccuracies on p. 237 of his book.
296 Clapham : The Economic Development
and accurate account of the Rebellion, despite Lord Ernest Hamilton's
attempt to impeach its veracity. It is indeed a relief to turn to its temperate
judgments, its carefully balanced conclusions, to say nothing of its sympa-
thetic knowledge of human nature aud psychology, after Lord Ernest
Hamilton's presentation of what appears to him to be ' the bald truth ' ; and
if Lord Ernest Hamilton's book has the effect of sending his readers to the
perusal of Lecky's pages, it will not be the least of its claims to possess some
real historical value.
St. Andrews. J. W. WILLIAMS.
THE ANNUAL REGISTER : A Review of Public Events at Home and
Abroad for the Year 1920. Pp. xii, 492. Demy 8vo. London :
Longmans, Green & Co. 1921. 305. net.
ONE views events as a constantly changing picture : the year's summary
puts them more flatly on a map. The map of 1920 has few allurements :
coal prices, strikes, Ireland, Mesopotamia, India, they are with us : and Sinn
Fein with murder and reprisal, is perhaps the most gruesome figure in the
nightmare. The year passes without visible rainbow in the home sky.
Abroad, the League of Nations is not rooting itself deep yet it is making a
gallant effort and remains a working aspiration and reality. The election
of Harding as successor of Woodrow Wilson is a reversal of United States
policy as regards intervention in Europe but there are different ways of inter-
national co-operation. Holland's refusal to surrender the Kaiser for trial is
welcomed by many men of sense. France is difficult to satisfy and the
Germans are maladroit when not perverse. But time is on the side of the
quiet life and men of good-will turn again to science, literature and art.
Science reports great progress in the wireless telephone. Old doctrines are
rediscussed — the age of the sun, the nature of evolution in relation to the
transmission of acquired characters, the return of influenza, and the life his-
tory of the eel, now proved to journey for breeding purposes to distant
Atlantic depths. Literature has produced Mrs. Asquith : her critic thinks
the Autobiography ephemeral : a fairer view may be that the pen-portraits
are permanencies, the life-witness of current history. Among the public
documents scheduled are the official reports on Jutland by Jellicoe and his
officers. The obituary is numerous rather than distinguished but it includes
Peary, discoverer of the North Pole, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Admiral Fisher
and the Empress Eugenie. The * Annual Register * never fails in that high,
calm, tolerant and impartial spirit which has always been its central inspir-
ation. GEO. NEILSON.
THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY, 1815-1914.
By J. H. Clapham, Litt.D., Fellow of King's College. Pp. xii, 420.
8vo. Cambridge: University Press. 1921. i8s. net.
IN lucid, narrative style the author tells the story of the economic develop-
ment of France and Germany during the century, which is likely to stand
out in history as the century of coal and steam. The thirteen chapters
which compose the book cover the entire ground of agricultural and
industrial progress, the last chapter dealing mainly with finance and the
of France and Germany 297
financial institutions which formed the balance wheel of the entire move-
ment. The author wisely reduces to a minimum those foot-notes, which
in many works of its class are a continual distraction to the reader, but he
gives in the preface a comprehensive list of the authorities from whom he
derives his information. Having subjected this mass of material to a
process of intellectual digestion and assimilation he has reproduced it in a
book which is interesting and readable from beginning to end.
There are no digressions to teach any particular lesson. The
narrative goes on in a straight and defined course. Some philosophic
reflections in ' The Epilogue ' leave the reader in some doubt as to whether
in the opinion of the author the representative common man of France and
Germany of to-day is better or worse off, happier or unhappier,than the man of
1815. Such problems have perplexed humanity in all ages. Mr. Clapham
quotes the opinion of one of his authorities, who, writing of the nineteenth
century at its close, said : * Its grievances have grown with its comfort,
and in proportion as its condition became better, it deemed it worse. The
mark of this century favoured among all the centuries, is to be dissatisfied
with itself. ' If this opinion is sound and if it is true that ' as a man
thinketh in his heart, so is he,' the representative man of to-day has little
reason to congratulate himself on his superiority to the representative man
of 1815.
The purpose of the book, however, is not to teach the Philosophy of
History. It is, as the author says, ca history not of economic opinion, but
of economic fact,' and as a narrative of fact it tells the story of material
changes, which amounted in effect to economic revolution.
So far as Western Europe is concerned, the century from 1815 to
1914 was a century of peaceful development. The first considerable war
to break the calm was the Crimean war, but that was a local affair.
The German war against Denmark was a trifle. The Austro-Prussian
war was a thing of a few weeks, and the Franco-German War
was over in six months. Compared to the war period which ended
in 1815 and to the new period beginning with the cataclysm of 1914,
from the effects of which the world is still reeling, it was a century of
peaceful industrial progress. Coal was King, with steam as its deputy,
and what this meant, particularly in creating our immense cities, can be
illustrated from Hume's well known essay on the Populousness of ancient
nations, written before the days of steam. Hume disposes of the accounts
given by ancient historians of the teeming millions of ancient cities, by proving
clearly that such great multitudes could not possibly have been crowded
together, because the sources from which they could draw their food and
the means of communication made this impossible. But those conditions
did not change materially up to Hume's day, and arguing from the same
premises he says: 'London, by uniting extensive commerce and middling
empire, has perhaps arrived at a greatness which no city will ever be able to
exceed.' The population of London at that time was equal to that of
Paris, and each of those cities contained about 700,000 people. London
to-day has a population ten times greater than that which Hume believed
was the limit of its growth. That is what the century of coal and steam
298 Forbes : Founding of a University
has done for us. If the century which we have now fairly entered is to be
a century of water power applied through electricity, the industries of the
future may once more be scattered beside the mountain streams and sea-shores.
Thus while the age of coal and steam has been the age of concentration,
the age of electricity may become the age of dispersion, and the people may
leave our smoke-polluted * wens,' the abomination of Cobbett, for the freer
air of the open spaces.
Mr. Clapham's book, which contains a good index, is a mine of in-
formation statistical and otherwise, which no one who wishes to study the
economic history of Western Europe during the past century can well
afford to neglect. A T
ANDREW LAW.
THE FOUNDING OF A NORTHERN UNIVERSITY. By F. A. Forbes. Pp.
xi, 228. With 6 Illustrations. Small 8vo. Edinburgh and London.
Sands & Co. 1920. 6s. net.
MR. F. A. Forbes has written a monograph of much interest to the citizens
of the North-East of Scotland and of particular interest to all sons of Aber-
deen University.
Quoting largely from the annals and records of the time — one wishes that
Mr. Forbes had worked up this material more and made his picture still
more full — the writer adds, as it were, an extended footnote to Mr. J. M.
Bulloch's History of the University of Aberdeen by giving a general sketch of
the conditions of life prevailing in the North-East of Scotland at the close
of the Middle Ages when, in the days of James IV. Bishop Elphinstone
received from Pope Alexander VI. the Bull founding the University of
Aberdeen on the democratic model of the University of Paris. The
Medieval Church, even in the outlying districts of the North, had been not
only a great religious and social, but also a great educational power ; the
foundation of Aberdeen University was the richest and most enduring gift
of the Church, to the intellectual life of north-eastern Scotland. Mr. Forbes
regrets as we all do that the Presbyterian zealots of the Reformation should
have destroyed so ruthlessly much of the beauty that Elphinstone and
Dunbar had inspired, and should have dealt so hardly with such devoted
sons of the old faith as John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, devoted counsellor of
Mary of Scots in the days when even her own son forsook her. One could
wish that Mr. Forbes had voiced his evident thought, that throughout times of
change and vicissitude, the University of Aberdeen has stood in the North-
East as a monument to the philanthropic vision of the great churchmen of
the past, inculcating the lesson of gratitude for evident benefits upon citizens
and University graduates of all creeds.
JOHN RAWSON ELDER.
IRELAND UNDER THE NORMANS, 1216-1333. By Goddard Henry
Orpen. Vol III. Pp. 314. Vol IV. Pp. 343. With a map.
8vo. Oxford : Clarendon Press. 1920.
IN these two masterly volumes Mr. Orpen has in a thorough, unhurried,
and workmanlike manner brought to a conclusion an ambitious undertaking
Orpen : Ireland under the Normans 299
interrupted by the Great War. Those new volumes (vols. iii and iv) are of
the nature of pioneer work to an even greater extent than their predecessors
published in 191 1.1
The whole work, now happily completed, is of great value as a contribu-
tion to the earliest period of Irish History for which satisfactory evidence is
available, and the judicial impartiality of its tone justifies the author's
modestly expressed claim that he has viewed the period of which he writes
purely from a medieval standpoint, allowing no * modern political nostrum
to colour the presentation of the picture drawn.' If the main value of the
treatise lies, however, in the help afforded towards laying the foundations of
early Irish History upon an unprejudiced basis, its usefulness extends in other
directions also, three of which may be pointed out. Mr. Orpen's carefully
marshalled data afford a view of how the wonderful genius of the Normans
for administration grappled with a new set of difficulties in a new locality.
It is, further, an interesting study of the working of feudal principles in
conflict with the tribal customs so deeply rooted in the Celtic mind. Finally
Mr. Orpen's untiring labours have made available a mass of neglected
material which, when collated with contemporary English record evidence,
is capable of throwing much light on the development of law and institutions
in England at an interesting and critical period.
Of the manner in which Mr. Orpen has completed his undertaking, it
would be difficult to speak too highly. Evidence of careful and successful
scholarship appears upon every page.
WM. S. McKJECHNIE.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND. Session
MDCCCCXIX — MDCCCCXX. Vol. liv. Fifth Series, vol. vi. Pp. xxxi, 276,
with many illustrations. 410. Edinburgh : Printed for the Society
by Neill and Company Ltd. 1920.
IN 1919 the Antiquaries made great changes in their managing personnel.
Mr A. O. Curie who had by request continued in charge of the National
Museum notwithstanding his appointment as Director of the Royal Scottish
Museum has now given up the double office and his departure was made the
occasion of well-earned compliments to his knowledge, courtesy and adminis-
trative capacity. The important position which he vacated was conferred
on Mr. J. Graham Callander, an excellent antiquary of shrewd judgment
and tried experience, to whom we wish a long and successful career as
Director of the National Museum.
The volume for session 1919-1920 will bear comparison with the finest
and most varied of its antecedents. Not only are the subjects in themselves of
standard note, but the handling of several of the more intricate must satisfy
archaeologists that the national antiquities are being adequately expounded,
and that sometimes as in the case of the Crossraguel coins and the excavations
at Traprain the expositions are unsurpassed whether for inherent interest or
in technical skill. Dr. George Macdonald in his paper on the Mint of
1 Reviewed S.H.R. vol. xi. p. 182.
300 Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
Crossraguel Abbey describes with added light1 the find of coins including
88 farthings inscribed MONE[TA] PAUP[ERUM and 51 pennies in-
scribed CRVX PELLIT OMNE CRI[MEN]. The commentator's
explanation accompanied by plates of specimens, is complete and triumphant :
the coins are of the Abbey's own mintage, possibly under cover of charity
involving some possible profiteering by the monks.
Mr. A. O. Curie writing about the great find of Traprain gives a masterly
account to which the fine illustrations are luminous corollary. ' Further
exploration,' concludes the learned and fortunate director of the investigations
Billon Penny, James III.
Copper Farthing, James III.
Crossraguel Copper Penny,
first variety.
Crossraguel Copper Penny,
second variety.
Crossraguel Copper Farthing, third variety.
and discoverer of the hoard, ' may reveal fresh facts, but for the present the
light of our knowledge does not suffice to dispel the darkness that enshrouds
the history of this great hoard previous to its being buried on the shoulder
of Traprain Law.' Mrs. T. Lindsay Galloway excellently records the
exploration of a burial cairn at Balnabraid, Kintyre, adding good photographs
and a most lucid plan and section by Mr. Mungo Buchanan. Among
other interesting articles is Dr. Hay Fleming's extensive paper of transcript
from the accounts of Dr. Alexander Skene on the repair of St. Salvator's
College buildings in 1683-1690. Needless to say the editor finds many of
the entries illuminating both as regards the costs of the work done and as
regards the wide circle of subscriptions which enabled the authorities to foot
the bill.
GEO. NEILSON.
1 See S.H.R. xvii., 163.
Social History of England and Wales 301
BRITISH ACADEMY RECORDS OF THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY OF
ENGLAND AND WALES. Vol. IV. A Terrier of Fleet, Lincolnshire,
and An Eleventh Century Inquisition of St. Augustine's, Canterbury.
Pp. lxxxv-214 and xxxvii-33- With 2 Maps. Royal 8vo. Oxford :
The University Press. 1920. 2 is.
THIS is the third volume to appear of this unique and valuable series of
historical records. While it is rightly said in the Preface of the Editorial
Committee that ' England possesses the most remarkable set of records of
economic and social history in the world,' one wonders if * England ' is in-
tended in the geographical sense. Certainly Scotland is particularly rich in
similar documents, and it is unfortunate that so much historical writing about
Scotland has neglected this store of essential material. As long as the old
bad habit is continued of writing history by repeating or discussing what
has been printed already, little progress can be made. In that way opinions
are made to do duty for facts, and the whole mechanical process of book
making is a travesty of modern historical study. This is a special danger
now that the social and economic history of Scotland is beginning to be
studied, or rather it may be said people are thinking of beginning to study
it. If the result is merely to collect the views of contemporary writers, who
in many cases were ill-informed or prejudiced, it might be better to leave it
alone. What is required is to get to the documents : and, if possible, to
secure the printing of valuable MS. material. In spite of the excellent work
of the Scottish Historical Societies much remains to be done, and there could
be no better model than this series as developed under the able editorship of
Sir Paul Vinogradoff. It is much to be hoped that, even yet, a way may be
found of preventing the threatened suspension of volumes which have been
arranged for already.
The first part of the book, now under consideration, is a Terrier of Fleet
in Lincolnshire under the editorship of Miss N. Neilson of Mount Holyoke
College, Mass., which was drawn up in the ninth year of Edward II. It
is of great local interest through the precise account of the names of the
tenements, their owners and the conditions of tenure. The wider historical
purpose is to be found in the record of the adaptations of the manorial organi-
sation to the conditions of fen life. This adaptation obtained a separate title
in early account rolls, being dealt with under the heading * Mariscus.' The
common life of the fenland manor had necessarily much concern with the
protection of the land from inundation, and its success depended largely upon
the quantity of safe pasturage. In addition, revenue was derived from sale
of moorland, turbary, fishing and fowling and some other miscellaneous items.
The relative isolation of sections of the fens was marked at very much later
dates than that of the Terrier, and a community, so shut in and living under
special conditions, was adapted to preserve its own development of manorial
customs. At the same time, even at the time of the Terrier, there were
necessary relations with the outside world. An industry of some importance
was the production of salt by means of evaporation. There was a special
place, le mothow, where salt was brought to be marked and rent and
fines collected for the lord of the manor. The salt was then ready for
shipment.
u
302 Social History of England and Wales
The second document, an Eleventh Century Inquisition of St. Augus-
tine's, Canterbury, is edited by the late Adolphus Ballard. The importance
of this document is built up piece by piece, in a thorough historical investi-
gation by the editor. It is contained in a cartulary of the thirteenth
century, yet it is shown that the compilers of the document possessed a more
intimate knowledge of the abbey than is to be found in the Doomesday
Book. That might be explained by additions made to the Doomesday
Survey by a man well acquainted with the affairs of the abbey. But a closer
examination of the document shows that in the rest of Kent, and particularly
in the case of the boroughs, the Inquisition is better informed than the
Doomesday Survey, as, for instance, a passage of about 100 words relating
to the mills of Canterbury which is wanting in the Survey. Also the
Inquisition shows a better acquaintance with English place-names, and finally
the conclusion is reached that the document is based on the lost returns of
the hundreds from which the Doomesday Book was compiled. This leaves
the question of transmission still to be determined, which the editor sums up
as follows : ' The utmost that can be claimed for our document is that it is a
copy, made in the thirteenth century, of a copy made between noo and
1154 (or possibly 1124) or~ an independent compilation, made in or before
1087, from the original returns of the hundreds from which Doomesday
Book was compiled.' W. R. SCOTT.
FORNVANNEN MfiDDELANDEN FRAN K. VlTTERHETS HlSTORIE OCH AN-
TIKVITETS AKADEMIEN. 8vo. With many Illustrations. Stockholm,
1917.
IT is obvious from the bulk of this volume that in Sweden archaeological
research was in no way hampered by the great war.
The papers treat of a variety of topics. Herr T. J. Arne deals with
the antiquities of Vermland, a province less known to travellers and less
rich in material than some of the districts further south, but here also are
found and described many burials of types with which we are familiar in
Scandinavia — cist burials of the stone age, piled cairns of the age of bronze,
and stone settings of the iron age. The oldest iron age cemeteries belong
to the La Tene culture, others have been noted dating from the transition
period about A.D. 400, and from the older Viking age. Early trepanned
skulls are the subject of an article by Herr Fiirst. Seven of these were
known in Sweden before 1913. Three new examples are now added to
the list, two dating from the early iron age, and one from the Viking time.
Herr Hjarne chronicles an interesting find of fibulae from Storkage, in the
province of Vesterbotten. It contained, among others, two penannular
brooches with enamelled terminals of a type known in Finland, and also
found in Esthonia. The deposit appears to date from the first half of the
fourth century A.D., and affords evidence of direct trade relations between
Northern Sweden and Esthonia at a relatively early period.
Herr Berger Nerman returns to the study of the Ingling saga, subjecting
it to an examination from an archaeological standpoint, with a view to
establish the chronology of the Inglings, the earliest race of the Kings
of Sweden.
Fornvannen Meddelanden 303
The Ingling saga gives details of the death and burial of the Kings,
taken from the Inglingatal written about 870 A.D. by Tiodolf of Hvin in
honour of the Norse King Ragnvald. In his introduction to the saga
Snorre Sturlason tells that an age in which the dead were burnt and a
bauta stone erected above their ashes preceded the age of burial in howes.
With the exception of Frey, who is legendary, the earlier Inglings are said to
have been cremated. The transition from cremation burial and the erection
of a stone to the mound burial is noted on the death of Alf and Yngve,
who were laid in a howe on the Fyris meads at Upsala. The transition
must date from about A.D. 400, at the close of the period of the iron age
which is characterised by the presence of objects showing Roman culture.
The graves of this period in Uppland, where the Ingling Kings ruled, show
that the bodies were, almost without exception, cremated. On the other
hand, Aun, Egil and Adils, who come early in the succeeding period, were all
laid under mounds in Upsala, and probably the great Kings' howes, which
still form so prominent a feature in the landscape at old Upsala, were raised
above them. The excavation of these mounds has afforded evidence that
the burials which they contain belong to the fifth and sixth centuries. The
grave of Ottar, another King of the race, seems to have been identified by
the excavation of a mound bearing his name, the Ottar's howe at Vendel
in Uppland, which, among other relics, contained a solidus of the short-
reigned Emperor, Basiliscus, A.D. 476-477. King Hake, who fell in battle
and who was laid in his ship with his dead comrades and sent blazing out
on the Malar lake, is assigned on archaeological grounds to the fifth
century. In a later stage of the evolution of ship burial the dead Viking,
laid in his boat as at Gokstad in Norway, was covered by a mound. The
final stage was doubtless the * ship setting,' the lines of boulders set in the
turf over the grave reproducing the outline of a boat.
Among the recent acquisitions of the National Museum, Stock-
holm, which are illustrated, is a chessman of walrus ivory, a Knight with
long pointed shield, found in the island of Oland. It closely resembles a
similar piece found in the island of Lewis, now in the Scottish National
Collection. JAMES CURLE.
THE SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF SCOTLAND FROM THE UNION
TO THE PRESENT TIME. By James Mackinnon, M.A., D.D., Regius
Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Edinburgh. Pp. viii,
298. 8vo. London : Longmans, Green and Co. 1921.
THIS is an interesting and a useful volume. It is the continuance of a
recently published work, in which the author presented a similar history,
beginning with the earliest times and continuing down to the Union.
Here we have the two centuries which have passed since that event. The
subject is a large one, and we can imagine the objection being taken that
it is too large to be disposed of within so small a space. Call this, however,
a handbook and not a history, and no such objection could be raised. The
author himself professes * only to give a review, which, while intended for
the general reader as well as for teachers and students of Scottish history,
may serve as an introduction to farther intensive study.'
U2
304 Mackinnon : Social History of Scotland
The book is comprised of two parts, one dealing with the eighteenth,
the other with the nineteenth century 'and after.' The second is more
than twice as long as the first, and may well be so. For although from
1750 to 1800 there was, compared with the stagnant condition in which
Scotland had so long remained, a great advance, the eighteenth century was
after all one of mere beginnings pointing to vast possibilities in the future.
A good illustration of the difference between the two periods dealt with is
afforded by referring to the lists of authorities founded upon at pages 57 and
271, the one dealing with the earlier, and the other with the later period.
This is not exactly a new field for research. It is characteristic of
modern historians to deal with more than mere dates and battles, and there
are valuable treatises specially devoted to the social and industrial condition
of Scotland. Professor Mackinnon's excuse is really that a handbook,
digesting the vast amount of available material, and stating the results
briefly, may not be without its use. He has, we think, succeeded in
producing a volume of practical value. There is a great deal of very
varied information to be found here, and many authorities must have been
consulted, and gone through the process of boiling down.
Concerning the first half of the eighteenth century there is not much to
relate. Scotland was during that period miserably poor, much of its land a
morass, its agriculture lamentably primitive, its manufactures, in the modern
sense of the word, non-existing. Somehow or other the events of 1745
seemed to have cleared the air, for after that date there is a marked improve-
ment and increase of wealth. The feudal bonds were relaxed, land came
under a more scientific treatment, the mineral resources of the country
began to be developed, villages became towns, and towns more than
doubled their population. Steam, although in an experimental fashion,
was attracting attention. Men lived in larger and better houses, and, in
defiance of the Kirk, began to take an interest in the arts and drama.
The century closed with a decided advance in all respects, but how little
could those who witnessed the dawn of its successor have foretold what
was yet to come, or anticipated the marvellous story which the second part
of this book relates. Agriculture, all the industries primary and secondary,
the development of a few lines of horse tramways into the network of
railways, the wonders of modern machinery, the commercial and municipal
enterprises, all these things and more are here dealt with, briefly it is true,
but clearly and satisfactorily. In only one respect may the earlier period
claim comparison with its successor. From an intellectual point of view
the advance was not so great. Scotland in the eighteenth century could
boast of many eminent men. Edinburgh, with such divines as Blair and
Robertson, such philosophers as Hume and Adam Smith, and such judges
as Kames and Hailes, might compare favourably with the much greater and
richer city of the present day.
As Dr. Mackinnon remarks, 'ecclesiastical contention and theological
discussion have entered very deeply into Scottish social life.' Accordingly
he has not overlooked the religious condition of the country. He has dealt
with the subject in a modern and liberal spirit. Even the latest heretic,
Mr. Robinson, deposed by the Church of Scotland some twenty years ago,
Wanderings in the Western Highlands 305
is favourably noticed, and his deposition condemned as ' an obscurantist
attempt to limit the freedom of theological and historical research.' It is
surely a mistake to say that the House of Lords only partially recognised
the claim of the Free Church. The * Wee Frees' obtained all that they
asked from that Court, and it was only through State interference that
substantial justice was effected. The subject here dealt with suggests a
painful thought. It is a story of continued progress. Is that progress still
to go on, or are we now, as the Dean of St. Paul's suggests, on the road to
ruin ? W. G. SCOTT MONCRIEFF.
WANDERINGS IN THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS. By M. E. M.
Donaldson. Pp. 510. With Plans and many Engravings. Large
8vo. Paisley : Alexander Gardner. 1921. 305.
WE have visited, or revisited, with pleasure, under the guidance of the
authoress of this large volume many of the leading historical, many of
the most striking, and, to her credit be it said, many of the most
inaccessible, but none the less attractive, places of interest in the High-
lands of Scotland.
Her ' Wanderings ' have led her not only to lona, Culloden and Skye,
but to Ardnamurchan, Eigg and Dun-Add, and she has passed the night
on Staffa and on Eileach-an-Naiomh, one of the Garvelloch Islands.
There is a photograph of the small church on the latter island, in which
possibly St. Columba himself officiated, and a hypothetical plan of the
monastery buildings. Indeed, one of the greatest charms of the book is
her collection of engravings, forty-two in number, including views of
St. Columba's landing place at lona, of Prince Charlie's Beach at Loch-
nan-Uamh, of Castle Tirrim, of Stewart of Ardsheal's Cave in Duror, of
one of the Glenelg Brochs, and of cottages at Kilmory, Ardnamurchan,
with Rum and Eigg in the distance. The plans, too, which she has had
prepared with meticulous care, or obtained permission to use, show the
* surmised site of St. Columba's monastery,' the medieval monastery on
lona, Dunvegan Castle, Castle Tirrim, the forts at Dun-Add and at the
head of Loch Sween, an old church at Arisaig, and Dun Telve Broch
at Glenelg. We regret the want of a bibliography. Room might well
have been found for a very useful one without attaining the 'inordinate
length ' she apprehended.
Our guide in these * Wanderings ' has a very marked personality, which
she makes no attempt to conceal, and holds strong opinions (and prejudices)
of which she is apparently rather proud. These force one to read the
book, which is not free from inaccuracies, with caution, and to be careful
about accepting her l incontrovertible facts.' Thus her walk through Glen
Sligachan, which she says she accomplished in twelve hours, can only attain
the length she assigns to it of thirty-nine miles, if her statement that * one
mile of Glen Sligachan is said to be the equivalent of two ordinary miles'
be taken as literally correct.
Although a staunch Jacobite, a devoted Episcopalian, and a loyal and
attached member of the clan par excellence, the Clan Donald, to whom
it must be a matter of great regret that her own surname takes the lowland
306 Russell : Tradition of the Roman Empire
form, and without a good word for the Clan Campbell (individual
acquaintances excepted), she need not attempt to turn MacCailean Mor,
son of Great Colin, into MacChailein Mor, son of the Great Whelp, nor
need she always treat Presbyterians with contempt, referring to their
churches as mere places of worship, and speaking of their clergymen as
* Established ministers,' in contrast to the Roman parish priests and the
Episcopalian rectors. Her reference to * the Edinburgh Court of Session '
also reveals her attitude towards all things not Highland. lona in her
opinion 'suffered its final declension when in 1688 it passed into the hands
of the family of Argyll.' She cannot but regret the duke's gift of the
ruins to the Church of Scotland in 1899, and to her the restoration of the
Abbey Church, as apparently of all pre-Reformation buildings, is anathema.
We have never heard English spoken in the Highlands as reproduced in
her conversations with her Highland friends. The cadences and the con-
struction may be correct, but the change of both consonants and vowels is
grossly exaggerated and misleading. In her other book ' The Isles of
Flame,' a poetic, romantic, and devotional description of St. Columba's
conversion of the Picts, we find Miss Donaldson at her best.
S. M. PENNEY.
THE TRADITION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. A sketch of European
History, with maps. By C. H. St. L. Russell, M.A. London :
Macmillan and Co. 1921. Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
THIS is a school history of Europe based on the thesis quoted in its
opening sentence : ' We must ever be thinking of Rome, ever looking to
Rome, sometimes looking forward to it, sometimes looking back to it, but
always having Rome in mind as the centre of the whole story.' The thesis is
modern, the method ancient. Obviously a school text-book of some 280
pages covering the history of Europe from the Pelasgian movement to the
Great War can be achieved only by rigid compression, but true statements
can be so compressed as to be difficult and even misleading to the literal
mind of youth, as this, in which material fact and mystical theory are
cryptically blended: 'And all this, because Rome was — what she had been;
because the Teutons had conquered Rome ; because Rome had never
fallen at all.'
The great merit of the book is that, unlike the usual school-book which
presents a chain of more or less connected facts, it is constructed solidly round
a definite point ; there is a principle for the young student to seize upon and
follow up. It is perhaps a pity that for Mr. Russell the tradition of the
Roman Empire means the tradition of the imperial dominion, so that
European history appears as a series of French and Teutonic attempts to
grasp the power that Augustus held. That the Empire stood for
organisation, communications, peace and order is not made clear, nor is
room found for the constant tradition, so fertile of noble men and deeds,
of the Roman Republic. Yet History must be taught with an eye to the
future, and the only future Mr. Russell suggests is that of another attempt
at dominion. The simplicity of the single principle has its dangers.
W. L. RINWICK.
Foster : The English Factories in India 307
THE ENGLISH FACTORIES IN INDIA, 1555-1660. By William Foster,
C.I.E. Pp. 440. 8vo. Oxford : Clarendon Press. 1921. i6s. net.
IT is a welcome sign of recovery after the war that a volume of this series
has appeared. The last was issued in 1915, and, in spite of the increase
in prices in the interval, the cost has been advanced only by about twenty-
five per cent., while the size of the book has been added to by about the
same amount, so that the student interested in the British connection with
India is able to get his material practically at the pre-war price.
The period of suspension of publication has been utilised to make a
change in the treatment of documents. These are now grouped under
different Presidencies or agencies — as for instance, Surat, Persia, Coromandel
Coast and Bengal, Western India and the Inland Factories — and the docu-
ments under each of these are summarised or quoted and connected by
short passages of narrative. Thus the series has ceased to be a calendar,
and is on the way towards becoming a narrative based on documents.
With Mr. Foster as editor the work is in good hands, while references are
given which enable any document summarised to be traced and examined.
As a result this volume contains the result of an examination of eleven
hundred documents, few of which have been utilised before.
The period covered witnessed not only the Restoration of Charles II.
but also the Restoration of the Company. The previous volume and the
first two years of the present one show its fortunes in the depths of
depression. In fact in 1655 all that held the Company together was the
need of recovering and realising such assets as remained. In the words of
the committees in London, * our worke is now only to contrive to what
estate wee have in your parts.' Merchants, who were opposed to the
Company, were sending ships to India without hindrance, its servants were
without funds, they were discouraged and the factories became disorganised.
Further, in India the Empire of Shah Jahan was breaking up and Coro-
mandel was invaded by Aurangzeb in 1656, while Fort St. George was
attacked in the following year. Yet in the midst of depression the spirit
of adventure was far from dead, as is shown, amongst other instances, by
the attempt to seize a vessel belonging to the Nawab as it passed Madras,
as a measure of reprisal. The dashing attack was successful as far as
securing the ship, but, alas, the factors were disappointed in securing the
treasure they expected, which one suspects was the main objective.
The revival of the Company's fortunes in India began at the end of
1657, when it was known a new charter had been secured and a con-
siderable capital subscribed. In the following year 13 ships were sent to
India, as against only one a few years before. The Committees of the
Company had a great task before them. They had to rebuild the
organization in India, reform abuses, and settle with independent or
* interloping' merchants who had established themselves. The first fruits
of enlarged resources and a vigorous administration begin to show them-
selves in the later pages of the present volume.
This account preserves much of the personality of the writers. A
couple of examples may be quoted. There is a faded letter from an
English sailor who had been employed by the Company. He was taken
308 David : Robert Curthose
prisoner by the Dutch and swam ashore, escaping 'very narroly.' The
President of the Company at Surat received him with ' very ill language,'
upon which he took service with Prince Aurangzeb, and he concludes,
*I thank God I doe live well and get mony.' The factors in Deccan
wrote with a sharp pen. In 1 660 they say, 'wee have livd heere upon
poore mens charity, in the midst of great envy. For you may please
to know that now Vauggy Shippott (Bhaji Shivpot), hearing that his bills
of exchange is not paid in Surat, and that Simbo Potell is likely to loose his
mony (as justly hee deserves), and that wee have found him to bee a
treacherous person, that laughs and smiles in our faces, when behind us hee
endeavours to cutt our throats, and contrives all wayes to roote us from
hence, hee now cannot dessemble longer, but appears in his owne coulours
and hates the sight of us as much as a monster doth a looking glace.'
W. R. SCOTT.
ROBERT CURTHOSE, DUKE OF NORMANDY. By Charles Wendell David.
Pp. xiv, 272, and one map. 8vo. Cambridge : Harvard University
Press. 1920. I2s. 6d.
WE are glad to have read this monograph. Robert Curthose from his want
of success has been somewhat neglected by historians and it is right that we
should have the sources for his biography collected, weighed and put to-
gether. The eldest son of the Conqueror was unlucky almost all his life.
His first rebellion against his father cost him the English Succession, and
his hold on Normandy was never too secure. One success he had and that
was in the Crusade of 1096, and it was as a crusader that any fame was
attributed to him by later chroniclers. His fall before the power of his
successful brother Henry I. led to his imprisonment in various castles in
England and Wales, and in the latter country he is said to have learned
Welsh and to have written verses in it. His long captivity and the death
of his only son — mult fu amez de chevaliers — is described in full detail in
this carefully compiled work. A. F. S.
A HISTORIC GEOGRAPHY OF THE BRITISH DEPENDENCIES. Vol. vii. —
India, Part II. History under the Government of the Crown. By
P. E. Roberts. Pp. iv, 212, and one map. Crown 8vo. Oxford :
at the Clarendon Press. 1920. ys 6d.
THE reader can have nothing but praise for this able continuation of the
first part of this excellent work. Beginning with the end of the Vice-
Royalty of Lord Canning, we are brought down to the Coronation Durbar
of the reign of George V. and the Montagu-Chelmsford report. The style
is clear and easy and the historic facts well weighed. Neither criticism
nor praise is refused to the work of each Viceroy but always in a spirit of
fair-mindedness. The period covers the increase of the Indian Empire by
the incorporation of Burma, and the reasons for this step are particularly
well dealt with. Lord Ripon's well-meant reforms are duly chronicled,
and Lord Curzon's rule given its quota of praise.
Kinnear : Kincardineshire 309
KINCARDINESHIRE. By the late George H. Kinnear, F.E.I.S. With
many maps, diagrams and illustrations. Pp. xii, 122. Fcap. 8vo.
Cambridge : at the University Press. 1921. 45. 6d. net.
THIS account of the county of Kincardine has been seen through the press
by the dead author's friend, Mr. J. B. Philips, and we must congratulate him
on his care. The author, however, had completed his work before his death.
He tells us that although the county at one time possessed a royal residence
it cannot be called a county of much national importance. The royal
residence was from Pictish times at Kincardine in Fordoun parish and
received Edward I. * The Mearns ' as part of the county is called, was in
early times a constant source of trouble, and three Scottish Kings died violent
deaths there. The county became the scene of the battle of Corrichie in
eueen Mary's time and was ravaged during the time of Montrose.
unnottar was the last stronghold to yield to Cromwell's troops and there
the romantic saving of the Regalia of Scotland by the wife of the minister
of Kinneff took place. The influence of the Earl Marischal made the
county Jacobite, and the old chevalier was proclaimed at Feteresso in 1715.
In 1746 it remained Episcopalian and suffered accordingly. Its antiquities
include stone circles, a crannog at Banchory and the Ogham stone of
Auchquhollie, as well as some crosses. The old church of Arbuthnott is
one of the few existing pre-Reformation churches of the North, and Benholm,
Dunnottar, Balbegno, and Crathes are interesting examples of places of
strength, while beautiful houses abound. In the Roll of Honour the author
includes the Keiths, Earls Marischal, Lords Monboddo and Gardenstone,
Bishops Wishart, Mitchell, Burnett, and Keith. Dr. James Arbuthnot, Pope's
friend, Marcas Ruddiman, David Herd and Dean Ramsay are among the
writers. To this information is added a complete account of the geology
and topography of the county and everything the intending visitor can wish
to know*
MODERN HISTORY IN OXFORD, 1841-1918. By C. H. Firth. Pp. 51.
8vo. Oxford : Basil Blackwell. 1920. is. 6d. net.
IN this pamphlet tracing the development of history-teaching in Oxford
Professor Firth shews the progressive spirit of research animating the
occupants of the chairs and lectureships — himself modestly in the back-
ground although most prominent in his steady success. It is a great record
of the rise of the historical stature of Oxford University.
One admires in Professor Firth's story the clearness with which he traces
the lifting of the Oxford historical ideal, alike in theory and practice, by
Stubbs and York Powell, and more recently under the influence of Firth
himself.
ADAMNANI VITA S. COLUMBAE. Edited from Dr. Reeves' text with
an Introduction on Early Irish History. Notes and a Glossary, by
E. T. Fowler, D.C.JL. New Edition, revised. Pp. 280. Crown
8vo. Oxford : at the Clarendon Press. 1920. IDS. 6d.
THIS new edition, revised and with a valuable glossary, will be welcome.
It is intended for students to whom the works of Bishop Reeves, on which
310 Fowler : Adamnani Vita S. Columbae
it is based, are inaccessible, but who wish to study virtutum libelli Columbae.
To make us understand this better, the writer has given a very interesting
history of the Early Church in Ireland, showing how it took there a form
not territorial as in England, but moulded by the Celtic System. Hence
many strange positions came about, bishops subordinate to chieftains, and
even to abesses, married secular clergy, and traces of polygamy, which even
the success of St. Patrick's mission did not change. We are given, too, an
excellent account of St. Columba's life both in Ireland and in Scotland, his
successors, their relations with the parent Irish Church, and of St. Adamnan,
who was of the saint's own kin. The editor holds that the Columban
Church was * certainly neither 'Roman' nor 'Protestant" and so far we
can follow him with certainty. A. F. S.
MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY. By Ernest Scott, Professor
of History in the University of Melbourne. Pp. viii, 346. With
Portraits. 8vo. Melbourne: Macmillan & Co. 1920. 12s. 6d.
THE writer of this well-written book has written brief biographies of a
number of thinkers and more full accounts of their theories and modes
of thinking, with contemporary and later comments thereon. The choice
is a little haphazard, and a book which includes Rousseau, Voltaire,
Napoleon, Metternich, Palmerston, Abraham Lincoln, Karl Marx, Darwin,
Gladstone and H. G. Wells, to mention no others, necessarily includes many
schools of thought and manners of thinking. Still he has managed to make
an interesting study, and at the end of his chapter on ' Tolstoy and Pacifism '
we have the excellent sentence, ' Pacifism has much to be thankful for in the
result of the war, even if those who fought in it and those who gave their
lives in a righteous cause had little reason to feel thankful to the Pacifists.'
HAMLET AND THE SCOTTISH SUCCESSION, Being an Examination of the
Relations of the Play of Hamlet to the Scottish Succession and the
Essex Conspiracy. By Lilian Winstanley. Pp. x, 188. Crown 8vo.
Cambridge : at the University Press. 1921. los.
WE find in this book a new attempt to discover the elusive meaning of
Hamlet's complex character by deriving the play from the tragic circum-
stances which surrounded the sad early life of King James I. and VI. The
author says that Denmark bulked largely in the popular mind through the
King's marriage and through Bothwell's death, and that therefore the
old play was chosen, but she deduces the tragedy from the murder of
Darnley and his widow's remarriage to Bothwell. We think this is going
too far. Even admitting that Shakespeare's plays sometimes contain bygone
tragedies known to the audiences and forgotten political allusion, it is
difficult to see why the playwright, while adapting the older play where the
murder of a king by his brother and marriage to his widow was an integral
part, did not alter this if he wished to be topical. No one can say that
Darnley and Bothwell were in any way 'brothers' (the author mistakes
'first' and 'second' husband for 'second' and 'third' on page 57), while
the fact that Hamlet's mother was not accused of the King's murder makes
it less easy to make her character agree with the guilty one popularly ascribed
Murray : Helps for Students of History 3 1 1
to Queen Mary through the venom of George Buchanan. All one can say
is that Shakespeare possibly desired the Scottish Succession, but it would be
difficult to identify James VI. with Hamlet. There are many suggestions of
possible origins, that the Ghost in the play comes from the ballad of the
murder of Darnley, and that the courtiers can be identified. While we do
not agree that the author proves her thesis she has written a book on an
interesting subject that will create discussion and provoke interest.
HELPS FOR STUDENTS OF HISTORY. Ireland, 1494-1603. By the Rev.
Robert H. Murray, Litt.D. London: S.P.C.K. 1920.
ONE wonders how the old-time student of history was able to work and
work so exhaustively, without the help of a book of this kind. This one
is exceptionally good. It begins by showing where the medieval statutes
may be found which have never been entirely collected together, and it
points out the effects of * Poyning's Law ' which has been so often mis-
understood. We are given a splendid list of authorities on the Reformation
and on the difficult subject of * the Plantations,' and the digest on * Modern
Books' should not be neglected by any one who wishes to attempt to
understand the melancholy history of the Sister Island. The essays are all
brilliant. A. F. S.
STUDY MANUAL FOR EUROPEAN HISTORY. By members of the Depart-
ment of the University of Chicago. Pp. vi, 51. 8vo. The
University of Chicago Press. 1920.
THIS is a list of readings for the history students of Chicago and also a
guide for reading in European History for extra mural-students. It contains
a long list of useful books.
THE SUBJECT INDEX TO PERIODICALS, 1917-1919. Issued by the Library
Association B.-E. Historical, Political and Economic Sciences.
January, 1921. Pp.495. Folio. London: The Library Association,
33 Bloomsbury Square. 1921. 2 is.
THIS bulky list of works classified by subject contains no fewer than 12,000
entries selected from over 400 British and foreign periodicals. The Scottish
journals are sparingly represented. As an aid to study this systematic
reference-book cannot fail to render capital service and certainly deserves
hearty encouragement.
SONGS OF THE GAEL. By Lachlan Macbean. Pp. 32. 8vo. Stirling :
Eneas Mackay. 2s.
TRANSLATED and set both to old notation and sol-fa these bilingual songs
are intelligible and interesting even to those who know no Gaelic.
STORY AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE REV. RICHARD BAXTER'S 'SAINTS'
EVERLASTING REST.' By Frederick J. Powicke. Pp.35. 8vo. Reprinted
from The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library. Vol. 5. 1920.
THIS essay by Dr. Powicke (father of Professor Powicke) explains the
sombreness and weariness of spirit in Baxter's best known book as reflecting
3 1 2 Watkins : Labor Problems in United States
the desperate political and religious conditions, 1645-1649, under which the
work was originally composed. It is however suggested also that he was
by disposition inclined to melancholy. His sincerity is insisted upon as
well as his conservative frame of mind. An alleged tendency to rationalism
is not very well supported. Contemporary charges of profiteering from
the Saints' Rest are triumphantly refuted. Dr. Powicke has amassed
a capital store of biographical commentary on a remarkable book which
was a stand-by for two centuries, although its decline and fall are
traced from 1690.
LABOR PROBLEMS AND LABOR ADMINISTRATION IN THE UNITED STATES
DURING THE WORLD WAR. By Gordon S. Watkins. Pp. 247.
8vo. University of Illinois.
THIS, one of the University of Illinois studies in the social sciences, offers an
excellently clear analysis of the organization of war labour, shewing the
details of the administrative work and concluding with inferences from the
immense experience thus gained. In general, British readers will be struck
by the closeness with which conditions across the ocean meet our own.
They will note with their own characteristic reservations the proposals for
' the introduction of democratic government in industry ' and the suggested
* provision for giving to labor a share in the excess earnings of industry.'
They will however unite in Mr. Watkins's aspiration for * the generation
of a spirit of co-operation, democracy and good-will between management
and labor.'
LETTERS OF THEOPHILUS LINDSEY. By H. MacLachlan, M.A., D.D.
Pp. xii, 148. Crown 8vo. Manchester: University Press. 1920.
6s.
THESE letters of the 'father of Unitarian Churchmanship,' 1723-1808, are
edited with loving care. The writer was an Anglican clergyman who in
1765 established the first Sunday School at Catterick, and became a
Unitarian in 1773. His letters are therefore of considerable interest to
historians of that body. One of his converts seems to have been the Duke
of Grafton.
CULLODEN MOOR AND STORY OF THE BATTLE. By the late Peter
Anderson of Inverness. New and revised edition. Pp. 190. Sm.
8vo. Illustrated. Stirling : Eneas Mackay. 1920. 5s.
DR. P. J. ANDERSON sponsors this capital reprint of his father's creditable
and well-informed local sketch and battle history which was first issued in
1867. An appendix of authorities on the battle and a detailed index add
to the serviceableness of this meritorious historical essay.
Li-on van der Essen : Contribution a rhistoire du port d'dnvers et du
commerce d? exportation des Pays-Bat vers FEspagnt et le Portugal a Mpoque
de Charles-Quint (1553-1554). Pp. 30. Anvers, 1921. An interesting
contribution to the history of European trade based on a Spanish Report in
Current Literature 313
the royal archives at Brussels. It may be noted that books printed at
Antwerp formed an important item in the list of exports, and that Antwerp
was not simply a base of export : the bulk of the goods dealt with were
produced in the Low Countries. j^ g^ g
In the Raleigh lecture on History to the British Academy — The British
Soldier and the Empire — by The Hon. John Fortescue (pp. 23, Milford,
2s. net), a most inspiring claim is put forward for the soldier as a contributor
to the historical literature and the imperial spirit of Great Britain. Notable
are the tributes to Moore and Jiaden Powell. Perhaps it was too much to
suggest that * the demon of drink ' has even yet been slain, and there may
be overstrain also in the view of the army man as a moral force otherwise.
But a little over-emphasis can be forgiven to the fine-spirited appreciation
of the high quality of the British soldier. Q^ j^
Unusual interest attaches to the presidential address given this winter to
the Ateneo of Madrid by Senor Ramon Menendez Pidal. It is published
in La Lectura : Revista de Ciencias y de Artes (Madrid, December 1920)
under the title Un Aspecto en la elaboration del * Quijote ' and contains matter
of concern to every lover of the Don and every student who enjoys tracing
the origins of the fun which that entertainer so plentifully supplies. * Don
Quixote' in its first part it will be remembered appeared in 1605, achieving
its immense success as by a lightning stroke. Its manifold sources give no
great trouble but the new question raised turns upon a work assigned to circa
1597 in which the primary plot of the future Don was if not forestalled, at
least suggested seven years before the immortal knight of La Mancha came
out into the open.
The work in question is styled Entremes de los Romances and is ascribed
to 1 597 although it must be owned that Sr. Pidal does not indulge us with
bibliographical particulars. When unearthed by Adolfo de Castro it was
declared to be the work of Cervantes himself, a view which Sr. Pidal will
not take for granted. In the Entremfs a farm-hand, Bartolo, reads himself
insane in the study of knightly romance, identifies himself with the heroes of
them and goes off on a course of unfortunate adventures of chivalry closely
parallel to those afterwards sustained or suffered by Don Quixote. The
parallels are at several points identities. Both Bartolo and the Don were
profoundly impressed by the well-known romance of the Marquis of Mantua.
Whoever turns to chaps. 4, 5, and 10 of Don Quixote will see how cleverly
Cervantes drew from that romance its extravagant humour. The romance
itself is printed in Ochoa's Tetoro de los Romanceros and the editor footnotes
the series of allusions to it made in Don Quixote. The ' aspect ' of these
allusions, however, noted by Sr. Pidal is that most of them are repetitions,
sometimes even verbal, from the Entremes. It is an * aspect ' which nobody
can refuse to see. But until the bibliography of the Entremes is definitely
worked out, the text of the parallel passages made available to English readers,
and the authorship of the Entremes reasonably determined, we in Great Britain
must remain in doubt whether Don Quixote was a single stroke of inspira-
tion from Cervantes, as we had supposed, or a secondary line of splendour
314 Current Literature
protracted and intensified from the Bartolo of another humorist-critic and
playful expositor of Spanish romance.
Sr. Pidal will bear with us if we are not in haste to decide without fuller
documentation in a process of such literary moment.
A Bibliography for School Teachers of History edited by Miss Eileen Power
(Pp. 62. 8vo. London : Methuen and Co., Ltd. is. 6d. net) merits
hearty commendations for the frank judgments, originality of social stand-
points, and general air of freshness and vigour characteristic of a preliminary
essay on the teaching of history. Its dominating idea is to press the study of
life a little more and politics a good deal less. This preference shews itself also
in the bibliography (240 volumes) by which Miss Power puts her principles
into practice as a guide to both teacher and student.
The English Historical Review for April strikes a general note more
technical and less popular than usual. 'The Genealogy of the Early
West Saxon Kings,' by G. H. Wheeler, pieces the sparse annals well
together. 'The War Finances of Henry V.,' by Dr. Richard A. Newhall,
and 'The Supercargo in the China Trade about the year 1700,' by Dr.
Hosea B. Morse are (perhaps the more because of their unromantic type)
rich in details of management, especially on wages, exchange and general
finance. As a combination of the functions of the trader and the diplomat,
the part the supercargo had to play had its adventures, and it is gratifying to
find Dr. Morse emphatic on the fitness of the men for their vocation : the
select committee formed from them during 1780-1834 'were the finest re-
presentives that England could have desired of her mercantile community.*
In a ' note and document ' article Dr. J. H. Round discusses the suggestive
but difficult fact of the occasional cases of exclusion of county-castles and
their baileys from the jurisdiction of the towns in which, or at which, they
were situated. Using Prof. Maitland's studies of Cambridge as a remarkable
instance of this birth mark of jurisdiction and ancient government, Dr.
Round impressively urges the paramount need of exact and exhaustive
topographical and historical research on all such problems. Miss Winifred
Jay unearths a charter by Edward VI. on 22 July 1550 which incidentally
states that the King had lately assigned the upper part of the chapel of St.
Stephen at Westminster pro domo parliament! et pro parliaments nostris ibidem
tenendis. This is a valuable ascertainment, determining with approximate
exactness when St. Stephen's ceased to be a mere ecclesiastical edifice and took
on that character as a political assembly-house which has so long been its
decisive connotation.
The Antiquaries' Journal for April shows the new magazine of the
London antiquaries maintaining its steady place as a business-like record of
current discussion, discovery and commentary. For the moment perhaps
the controversies are not urgent, but the battle of Ethandun gives oppor-
tunity for some not too cogent theorizing by Albany F. Major, while on
the other hand certain beautiful Irish gold crescents are skilfully shepherded
by Reginald A. Smith towards historical connections with the Aegean area,
probably by way of Spain as intermediary. An axehead of stone, perhaps
quartzite, dug up at Amesbury, is well described by Sir Lawrence Weaver.
Current Literature 315
Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset for March starts its seventeenth
volume with a change of editor, the Rev. C. H. Mayo, for thirty-four years
associated with the office, now retiring with all the honours of capital service.
Rev. G. W. Saunders and Rev. R. G. Bartelot now conduct this charming
little periodical. Extracts from record have always been a feature. The
present number reproduces an Anglo-Saxon page from the tenth century
Gospel Book of Widcombe Lyncombe. There are good notes on local
bells and on the bellfounder Robert Austen, discussions on the birthplace
and parentage of Dr. John Bull, and enquiries about arms in churches. The
odd legend of the Martyrdom of St. Indract assigned to A.D. 689 is trans-
lated. It has special interest from its connection with the cult of St. Patrick.
A fine portrait of Vice- Admiral Sir Samuel Hood, 1762-1814, accompanies
a notice of an eminent naval family.
We have received the March number of the Aberdeen University Review
vol. viii, part 23. Its themes are, India in Transition, English Spelling, the
University Greek Play, and the art of the Theatre. Professor Harrower
dealing with the Greek Play of 1920, which was the 'House of Atreus,'
interprets the performance as proof of * the undoubtedly great amount of
first-rate dramatic talent in the University.'
The American, Historical Review for January opens with a historical
retrospect by Edward Channing crisply summarising American tendencies
and movement since the Mayflower set her passengers ashore. The negro
question is touched upon with significant diffidence and the Civil War is
handled with equally significant repression. America's growing consciousness
of world-responsibility is reflected in this interesting survey. It is followed
by a paper on early Russia : a continuation search into the origins of the
late War : and an enlightening set of letters and diary extracts from the
papers of General Meigs on the conduct of the Civil War, particularly as
regards General M'Clellan.
Another important chapter on the same period is by Mr. L. M. Sears on
the adventures of John Slidell, the famous Confederate diplomat, at the
French court. His greatest adventure of course was the affair of the Trent
in 1 86 1 when a U.S. warship made him a prisoner and nearly brought about
a war with Great Britain. Slidell's intrigues with both France and Russia
have a taint of almost pathetic ineptitude but he made a dignified stand for
a lost cause. The silent refusal by President Johnson of Slidell's petition
to be allowed to return to the States for temporary business purposes in
1866 impresses one to-day as not less impolitic than ungenerous, but no
doubt the position was still equivocal.
The American Historical Review for April contains a summary of the
Washington meeting of the American Historical Association in December
last. Among the subjects was the imperium under Augustan constitution as
modified by Hadrian's action in organizing a council of jurisconsults to assist
him in his decision. Many modern and post helium topics were treated, em-
bracing the slave trade, the influence of Wesley during the American
Revolution, the diplomatic relations of the American continent, and the
historical policy of the Association itself.
316 Current Literature
In the same number a special article by Frederic Duncalf is devoted to
the Peasants' Crusade of 1096. Its trend inclines to lessen the obloquy
resting on the shoulders of Peter the Hermit for incapacity and decadence
of spirit. It modifies also the usually adverse estimates of the Emperor
Alexius and lays the chief blame for disasters at the economic door, the
inadequate resources of the pilgrims. 'The via sancta' (says finally this
criticism) ' was not for the pauper.'
A Russian view of the American Civil War, by F. A. Colder, is most
notable for the high opinion of Lincoln's personal character which the
Russian ambassador, fidouard de Stoeckl, formed, although his uniform view
of the president as politician was unfavourable. Perhaps it was inevitable
that a Russian diplomatic in the sixties should reckon a democratic states-
man as entirely wanting in the qualities requisite for political autocracy.
The transport of troops on American railroads during the War is examined
by Ross H. M'Lean, who commends the skill with which five millions of
men were entrained and moved l on schedule ' to their stations.
The Caledonian for April, with its usual modicum of breezy patriotic
United State's Scotticism, has pictures of Kinloch Rannoch and Ben Cruachan
and the Cross of Inveraray. Letterpress largely quoted from Scottish sources
deals with the localities of the pictures, plus an account of Clan Urquhart.
The number of the Revue Historique for September-October 1 920 con-
tains the second half of M. Boissonade's survey of the commercial relations
between France and Great Britain in the sixteenth century, and a further
instalment of M. Halphen's critical examination of the history of Charle-
magne. The latter is devoted to a destructive examination of the
conclusions of Inama-Sternegg and Dopsch with regard to the agricultural
system and ownership of land of the period. The Bulletin historique con-
tains reviews of recent collections of documents in the province of English
history, and of the latest contributions to the history of the French
Revolution. M. Ch. Guignebert gives a cautious and critical estimate of
Frazer's Folklore in the Old Testament.
The number of the same review for November-December opens with a
short but interesting study of legal administration in Burgundy in the
twelfth century by M. Ganshof. This article merits the attention of
students of the Scottish monastic chartularies. M. Halphen continues his
criticism of the conclusions of Inama-Sternegg and Dopsch, with particular
reference to industry and commerce in the age of Charles the Great.
Forty pages are devoted to notices of recent books on British history.
Canon H. F. Stewart's recent edition of Pascal's Provincial Letters receives
a very unfavourable notice.
M. Ernest Denis, the historian of Nineteenth Century Germany, died
in January, and his merits as a writer and a man are treated at some length
by M. Louis Eisenmann.
The Revue Historique for January-February, 1921, opens with the first
part of a study of the Prophltes of Languedoc in 1701-2 and in particular
with Jean Astruc <dit Mandagout' by M. Charles Bost. He describes his
subject as *unc crise rcligieuse morbide peut-Stre unique dans 1'histoire.'
Current Literature 317
M. Eugene Deprez deals with the Black Prince's victory of Najera (3rd April,
1367). The subject has been treated by a number of recent historians and
in particular by M. Delachenal. M. D£prez' main contribution is his dis-
covery in the Public Record Office in London of the official despatch of
the Black Prince. The Bulletin Historique is devoted to recent publications
on Medieval Church History, and in particular on the period of Gregory
the Great.
The Revue d'Histoireecclesiastique for January, 192 1, contains the first instal-
ment of an examination by M. Paul Fournier of the collection of canons
known as the Collectio XII partium, which he describes as a German
collection of the eleventh century. The first chapter of the study deals
with the various forms in which the collection has been preserved and
discusses their relations. The article is marked by the writer's careful
erudition. In a lengthy review Dom. Aubourg deals with Dr. A. T.
Robertson's Grammar of the Greek New Testament and sums it up as the best
elementary treatise on the subject. In a notice of the third volume of
Carlyle's Mediaeval Political Theory the view is expressed that in limiting
his researches to the main printed sources the author has diminished the
value of his conclusions. A long notice is devoted to the subject dealt with
in Leman's Urbain Vlll et la rivalitl de la France et de FAutriche de 1631
a 1635 and Recueil de s instructions generates aux nonces, which cast new light
on a neglected field. The number contains an interesting chronique and
the first instalment of a useful bibliography.
The French Quarterly for December contains a suggestive article by M.
Rocheclave on L' Evolution dugout dans 1'art fran^ais and an interesting study
by N. M'William of French Impressions of English Character (1663-1695).
The most important contribution is an Etude critique d'un groupe de poemes
de Leconte de Lisle by M. Maingard.
Leon van der Essen, Les Tribulations de TUniversit/ de Louvain pendant le
dernier quart du XVI* siecle, pp. 26 (Rome, 1920). Extracted from the
second volume of Rome et Belgique, a collection of materials and studies
published by the Institut Historique Beige de Rome. This sketch of a critical
phase in the history of the University of Louvain is based on a codex con-
taining a register of official letters of the period and on the correspondence
of Fabio Mattaloni preserved among the Carte farnesiane at Naples. The
codex had been borrowed by Professor van der Essen in 1914 and thus
escaped the fate which overtook the University Library. The pamphlet
indicates the difficult position occupied by a Catholic institution which
sought to preserve its independence and corporate privileges menaced by
both parties.
Archivum Franciscanum Historicum (July-October 1920) contains as its
first discussio < Le Chapitre general de 1272 c£l£br£ a Lyon.' Here Father
Andre" Callebaut re-establishes the Franciscan General Chapter of 1272 on a
firm foundation. It was the second of the four held at Lyons during the
thirteenth century, but has been overshadowed by the more important one
two years later. This earlier chapter has some interest from a Scottish
318
Current Literature
standpoint, for it dealt with the thorny question of the division of the
Franciscan provinces. Scotland desired restoration to the position of a
separate province, and King Alexander III. had approached the Holy See
with this aim in view. The Pope supported the claim, but there were
political difficulties which prevented it being formally granted by the
Chapter General. In the third article Pere Livarius Oliger discusses the
recent attribution by Dr. W. W. Seton and P. Lehmann of certain Fran-
ciscan manuscripts to Nicolas Glassberger, the Observantine Friar.
J.E.
Notes and Communications
LOCAL WAR RECORDS. The British Academy convened some
months ago a conference of representative historians, archivists and delegates
of local societies to discuss the question of the preservation of local war
records of a non-military kind. Sir William Beveridge, who is chairman
of the British Editorial Board for the Economic and Social History of the
War Period, called attention to the danger of local war records being
destroyed, and the necessity of taking in hand, without delay, the question
of their classification and preservation, and of determining what documents
or records might be disposed of.
In order to further this scheme local committees have now been formed.
Professor W. R. Scott, Political Economy Department, The University of
Glasgow, would be glad to know of any minutes of associations formed
during the war, and there must also be many diaries covering the war
period — some of which will contain material that would be valuable to the
social and economic student of the future. The committees which are
being formed in the larger centres will doubtless easily trace the more
important records, but there must be many sources of information which
are apt to be passed over, and it is to be hoped that Professor Scott will have
the assistance of all who can supply the information desired by the committee.
ST. MALACHY IN SCOTLAND (S.H.R. xviii. pp. 69, 228).
My note in the April number, p. 228, on Archbishop Malachy's journey
through Galloway, c. 1140, has elicited a timely correction from the Rev.
Dr. John Morrison. In expressing the view that it was at Cairngarroch
more probably than at Portyerrock that Malachy embarked for Ireland, I
laid some stress on his visit to St. Michael's church (ecclesia Sancti Michaelis),
which I identified with the parish church of Mochrum — ' the only dedica-
tion to St. Michael within the county of Wigtown.' Dr. Morrison points
out that charters No. 71, 72, 74 and 82 in the Liber de Dryburgh^ contain
reference to ecclesia sancti Michaelis de minore Sowerby. Lesser Sorbie, now
incorporated with the parish of Sorbie, being only about three miles from
Portyerrock, whereas Mochrum is nearly ten miles distant, may well have
been the scene of the Archbishop's miracle in restoring speech to the dumb
girl. If that was so, my argument that Mochrum lies on the direct road
to Cairngarroch has no bearing on the question ; although I am still
sceptical, perhaps stubbornly so, about the Archbishop risking the long
conflict with wind and tide in a voyage from Portyerrock, instead of the
short and easy passage from Cairngarroch to Bangor.
Monreith. HERBERT MAXWELL.
320 Archbishop Spottiswoode's History
ARCHBISHOP SPOTTISWOODE'S HISTORY (S.H.R. xviii.
p. 224). Bishop Russell in his preface to the Spottiswoode Society edition
of the History describes four MS. copies which had been in his hands.
No. I in the Advocates' Library. No. 2 in the possession of the Spottis-
woode family. No. 3 in the Kelso Library. No. 4 in the Library of
Trinity College, Dublin.
If the MS. in the Advocates' Library is not the very first draft it is
certainly a very early one. There were two MS. copies in the Lauder-
dale Library. One of the two is probably the copy now in Kelso
Library. Principal Baillie makes it clear that he had access to the final
MS., which is now in Trinity College, Dublin, and that before any
edition was published. Bishop Russell, who adopted the Trinity MS. for his
text, says it is ' the one prepared for the press by the author ' and * sanctioned
by the licence of two secretaries of state.' j) HAY FLEMING
SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY SOCIETY. It is proposed to
found a society under the above title, whose membership should be open
both to laymen and clergymen. An interim committee has already been
appointed, and further particulars can be obtained from the Rev. W. J.
Couper, 26 Circus Drive, Dennistoun, Glasgow.
SCOTTISH BIBLICAL INSCRIPTIONS IN FRANCE (S.H.R.
xviii. 181). The three texts headed by « ANFERVORE' refer to evil.
If the Scots who carved them came from Argyll, Skye or Uist, and also
knew Gaelic, then ' anfervore ' may be a corruption of the local Gaelic : an
fhir mhbir, of the Devil. In these places the Devil is called ' am fear mor '
and a son of the Devil, 'mac an fhir mh6ir.' (A Gaelic Dictionary, Herne
Bay, 1902, s.v. fear. God is called : am Fear Math, the good man, as
compared with the Devil, the big man). Possibly the * f h ' of * fhir ' was
sounded in the sixteenth century. The evils in the three texts : < the ire
of man,' * evil,' and ' live after the flesh,' are all an fhir mhdir^ of the
Devil.
A. W. JOHNSTON.
Index
Aberdeen University, Founding of, -
Aberdeen University Review,
Adamnani Vita B. Columbae,
Alexander, son of Donald, Earl
of Mar, note on, by W. R.
Cunningham,
Alexander, The Poetical Works of
Sir William,
American Foreign Policy,
American Historical Review, 149,
Anderson, Peter, Culloden Moor,
Angus, William, note by, -
Animal Life in Scotland, The In-
fluence of Man on, -
Annual Register, The,
Antiquaries' Journal, The, - 224,
Antiquaries of Scotland, Proceedings
of the Society of,
Anvers, Contribution a Fhistoire du
port a.\
Appin Murder, The, 1752,
Arbuthnots of Kincardineshire
and Aberdeenshire, The, by Sir
J. Balfour Paul, -
Archivum Franciscanum Historicum,
i5°>
Argyll, Duke of, communication
from, 65,
Arran and Queen Mary, The Earl
of, by R. K. Hannay, -
Atkinson, C. T., review by,
Ballads, Old English,
Baxters Saints' Everlasting Rest,
Story of, by Rev. F. J. Powicke,
Belgium ; The Making of a
Nation, -
Bell, Edward, Hellenic Architec-
ture, -----
298 Berwickshire Naturalists' Club,
3 1 5 History of the, - - 1 34
309 Bibliography for School Teachers of
History, - 314
Billon Penny, James III., - - 300
64 Black, J. B., Elizabethan Society, 60
Blaikie, W. B.,The Appin Mur-
290 der, 1752, Cost of the Execu-
224 tion, - - 249
315 Blair, Sheriff P. J., review by, - 215
3 1 2 Bolts, William, - 218
152 Boswell as Essayist, by J. T. T.
Brown, - - 1 02
145 British Army, A History of the, by
296 Hon. J. W. Fortescue, - - 206
314 British Dependencies, A Historic
Geography of the, - - 308
299 British History Chronologically
Arranged, by A. Hassall, - 142
3 1 2 Brown, J. T. T., James Boswell as
249 Essayist, - - 102
Butler, Sir Geoffrey, Manuscripts
of Corpus Christi College,
44 Cambridge, 223 ; Studies in
Statecraft, - - 210
317
Calderwood, A. B., note from, - 235
152 Caledonian, The, 62,226, 316
Cambridge, Manuscripts in Cor-
258 pus Christi College, - - 223
206 Campbell, H. F., Caithness and
Sutherland, - - 57
125 Campbell of Kilmacolm, Ninian,
by David Murray, LL.D., - 183
31 1 Carmina Legis, by W. M. Gloag, 135
Catholics in the Reign of Queen
140 Elizabeth, The English, - - 130
Charteris, A. H., reviews by,
55 "8, 133
321
322
Index
Chester, Chartulury of the Abbey of
St. Werburgh, - 128
Clapham, J. H., The Economic De-
velopment of France and Germany,
1815-1914, 296
Clark, James M., reviews by, 52, 56
dive, Duplelx and, by H. Dodwell, 5 o
Clouston, J. Storer, Early Orkney
Rentals in Scots Money or in
Sterling, - - 99
Combat, Illustration of Medieval
Judicial, - - 214
Cotton Industry, The Early English, 141
County Handbooks, - 57, 59, 309
Craigie, W. A., Scottish Biblical
Inscriptions in France,- - 181
Crosses and Lychgates, Old, - - 53
Crossraguel Copper Penny, 300 ;
Copper Farthing, - 300
Culloden Moor; - 312
Cumberland, George, Third Earl of, 123
Cunningham, W. R., communica-
tion from, - - 64
Curie, A. O., review by, - -127
Curie, James, reviews by, - 214, 302
Curious Word for Great Nephew,
note on, - 95, 152
Current Literature, 60, 146, 224, 314
Cur those, Robert, Duke of Normandy, 308
' Dalkeith Portrait of Mary Queen
of Scots, The,' 32,152,234,235
Daniels, G. W., The Early English
Cotton Industry, - 141
David, C. W., Robert Curthose,
Duke of Normandy, - 308
Deanesly, Margaret, The Lollard
Bible and other Medieval Bibli-
cal Versions, - 52
Dickie, John M., The Economic
Position of Scotland in 1760, 14
Diplomacy and the Study of Inter-
national Relations, - -'33
Dodwell, H., T)upUlx and dive, - 50
Domestic Life In Scotland, 1488-
1688, by J. Warrack, - - 127
Donald, T. F., review by, - 222
Donaldson, M. E. M., Wanderings
In the Western Highlands, - 305
Dornoch, Old, by H. W. Mackay, 117
Down, Two Centuries of Life in, - 57
Duplelx and dive, by Henry Dod-
well, - 50
Dublin, Manuscripts in Trinity
College, - 223
Dumbartonshire, John Irving, - 215
Dundrennan Abbey, - 156
Durham, The Place-Names ofNcrth-
umberland and, A. Mawer, 219
Economic Development of France and
Germany, 1815-1914, The, - 296
Economic Position of Scotland in
1760, by John M. Dickie, - 14
Edward of Carnarvon, The Cap-
tivity and Death of,T.F. Tout, 143
Edwards, John, reviews by, 134,
150, 318; note on Early In-
denture of Apprenticeship at
Haddington, - 231
'Eiroy,' - - 65, 152
Elder, Prof. John Rawson, review
by, 298
English Historical Review, 61, 147, 324
Elizabethan Society, by J. B. Black, 60
Essen, L. van der, Contribution a
I'histoire du port d'Anvers, - 312
European History Chronologically
Arranged, A. Hass'all, - 142
European History, Study Manual
for, - 3"
Everyday Things In England, A
History of, M. and C. H. B.
Quennell, - 212
Farthing, Crossraguel Copper, - 300
Farrer, William, An Outline
Itinerary of King Henry I., - 144
Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, - - 145
Firth, C. H., Modern History in
Oxford, - 309
Fleming, D. Hay, note by, - 320
Forbes, F. A., The Founding of a
Northern University, - - 298
Fornvannen. M edd elan den fr°an K.
Vitterhets och Antikvitets Akada-
mien. 1917, 302
Fortescue, Hon. J. W., A History
of the British Army, 206 ; The
British Soldier and the Empire, - 313
Foster, William, The English Fac-
tories in India, 1555-1660, - 307
Index
323
Fowler, E. T., Adamnani Vita 5.
Columbae, -
Franco-Scottish Society, Transac-
tions of the,
Eraser's Scottish Annual,
French Quarterly, The, 63, 149,
Gasquet, Cardinal, Henry Vlll.
and the English Monasteries,
' General Council,' On ' Parlia-
ment ' and, by R. K. Hannay,
Gilpin County, Colorado, Early
Records of, -
Glasgow Cathedral, The Western
Towers of, -
Glasgow, The City of,
Gloag, W. M., Carmina Legis, -
Gomme, A. W., review by,
Grant, Isabel F., An Old Scottish
Handicraft Industry, -
Gray, George, The Early Charters
of the Royal Burgh ofRutherglen,
Gray, James, review by, -
Haddington, Indenture in Dyeing
at, Text of, -231
Hall, Illustration of the Great, in
medieval times, -
Hallward, N. L., William Bolts,
Hamilton, Lord' Ernest, The Irish
Rebellion 0/1641, -
Hamlet and the Scottish Succession, -
Handicraft Industry, An Old
Scottish, by Isabel F. Grant, -
Hannay, R. K., Prof., On « Par-
liament ' and ' General Coun-
cil,' 157 ; note on Mandate
to the Burgh Commissioners
of Kinghorn for Parliament
in 1475, 235 > The Earl of
Arran and Queen Mary,
Hassall, A., British and European
History Chronologically Arranged,
Haverfield, F., by George Mac-
donald,
Heatley, D. P., Diplomacy and the
Study of International Relations, -
Heddle, J. G. F. Moodie, Orkney
and Shetland,
Hellenic Architecture, by Edward
Bell, - - - ' -
Henderson, Henry F., Religion in
309 Scotland, - - 140
Henry I., An Outline Itinerary of
143 King, by William Farrer, - 144
226 Henry Vlll. and the English
317 Monasteries, by Cardinal Gas-
quet, - 223
Higham, C. S. S., review by, - 218
223 Highlands, Wanderings in the
Western, by M. E. M. Donald-
157 son, - - 305
Historical Atlas of Modern Europe, 226
142 History, - - 148, 255
History, Helps for Students of, by
60 Rev. R. H. Murray, - -311
222 History, Men and Thought in Modern, 310
135 History of Medieval England, The
5 5 Administrative, by T. F. Tout, 49
Howarth, Sir Henry H., - - 144
277
Illinois Studies, University of, - 61
54 Indenture in Dyeing at Hadding-
117 ton, Early Eighteenth Century, 231
India, British Beginnings in Western,
by H. G. Rawlinson, - - 220
-233 India, The English Factories in
1555-1660, - 307
212 Iowa Journal of History and Politics,
218 62, 63, 226
Ireland under the Normans, - 298
293 Irish Academy, Proceedings of
310 the Royal, - - 147
Irish Rebellion 0/1641, The, Lord
277 Ernest Hamilton, - 293
Irving, John, Dumbartonshire, - 215
Jastrow, Morris, The Eastern Ques-
tion and its Solution, - 58
Johnston, A. W., notes by, 152,
155, 229, 236, 320
258 Jones, E. Alfred, note by, - 233
Juridical Review, - 62, 226
142
Kastner,L.E.,andH.B. Charlton,
226 The Poetical Works of Sir William
Alexander, - 290
133 Ker, Professor W. P., The Art of
Poetry, - 59
59 Kinghorn, Mandate to Burgh
Commissaries of, 1475, - - 235
55 Kinnear, G. H., Kincardineshire, 309
324
Index
Kirk's, Robert, Notebook, by D.
Baird Smith, - 237
Lamond, Robert, review by, - 209
Law, Andrew, reviews by, 220, 296
Learmonth, W., Kirkcudbrightshire
and Wigtownshire, - -57
Linden, H. van der, "Belgium :
The Making of a Nation, - - 140
Lindsay Society, Publications of the
Clan, - - 137
Lindsey, Letters of Theophilus, - 312
Livingston, E. B., The Livingstons
ofCallendar, - 119
Lollard Bible, The, - 52
Macbean, Lachlan, Songs of the
Gael, - - 311
MacBeth or MacHeth, note on,
152, i53» 236
MacBeth, Rev. John, note by, 153
Macdonald, George, F. Haverfield, 226
Mackay, H. M., Old Dornoch, - 117
McKechnie, W. S., reviews by,
49, 56, 291, 298
Mackie, J. D., Queen Mary's
Jewels, 83 ; review by, - - 130
Mackinnon, Professor James, The
Social and Industrial History of
Scotland, - 303
MacLachlan, H., Letters of Theo-
philus Lindsey, - -312
MacLehose, Hamish A., review
by, - 216
Macmillan's Historical dtlas of
Modern Europe, - - 226
M< Nair, A. D., Some Legal Effects
of War, - 56
Madrid, Presidential Address to the
dteneo of, - -313
Mainland, T., Orkney and Shetland, 59
Margaret Tudor, Queen, - 155
Marshall, Andrew, review by, - 123
Marshall, T. M., Early Records of
Gilpin County, Colorado, - - 142
Mary, Queen of Scots, Tour
through South-western Scotland
of, by Sir Herbert Maxwell, i ;
The Dalkeith Portrait of, by
Maria Steuart, 32, 234 ; notes
on, by Walter Seton, - 152, 235
Mathieson, W. L., review by, - 122
Mawer, Allen, The Place-Names of
Northumberland and Durham, - 219
Maxwell, Sir Herbert, Tour of
Mary Queen of Scots through
South-western Scotland, I ;
notes by, on St. Malachi in
Scotland, - 228, 319
May, T., and L. E. Hope, Cata-
logue of Roman Pottery in the
Museum, Tullie House, - 214
1 Mayflower ' Tercentenary, Sou-
venirs of, - 146
Mediaeval Forgers and Forgeries, by
T. F. Tout, - 59
Meyer, Dr. E. W., Staatstheoriem
Papst Innocenz' III., - 56
Miller, S. N., Samian Ware and
the Chronology of the Roman
Occupation, - 199
Mills, J. Travis, Great Britain
and the United States, - - 58
Moncrieff, W. G. Scott, review
by, - 303
Morison, J. L., John Mor/ey, - 60
Mort, F., Dumbartonshire, - - 59
Murray, David, LL.D., Ninian
Campbell of Kilmacolm, - 183
Murray, Robert H., Manuscripts
in Trinity College,' Dublin,
223; Helps for Students of History, 311
Mythical Bards and the Life of
William Wallace, - - 135
Neilson, Dr. George, reviews by,
53, 125, 135, 296, 313
Netocastle-upon-Tyne Council Min-
ute Book, - - 209
Northumberland and Durham, The
Place-Names of, A. Mawer, - 219
Notes and Communications, 66,
152, 227,319
Notes and Queries, for Somerset and
Dorset, - 225,315
Old Glasgow Club, Transactions
of the, - 1 46
Orkney Rentals, Early, in Scots
Money or in Sterling, by J.
Storer Clouston, 99 ; note on,
by A. W. Johnston, - - 229
Index
325
Orpen, G. H., Ireland under the
Normans,
Oxford, Modern History in, by
C. H. Firth,
'Parliament' and 'General Coun-
cil,' On, by Prof. R. K. Han-
nay, -
Parliament, The Evolution of, A. F.
Pollard,
Passages of St. Malachy through
Scotland, by Rev. Canon Wil-
son, - 69,
Paul, Sir J. Balfour, The Arbuth-
nots of Kincardineshire and
Aberdeenshire, 44 ; review by,
Penny, Billon, 300 ; Crossraguel
Copper,
Penney, Sheriff S. M., review
.by, -
Pidal, Senor Ramon Menendez,
Presidential Address by,
Place -Names of Northumberland
and 'Durham,
Poetry, The Art of, by W. P.
Ker, - - -.;'"-
Pollard, A. F., The Evolutions of
Parliament, -
Pollen, Rev. J. H., S.J., The Eng-
lish Catholics in the Reign of
Queen Elizabeth, -
Porteus, Rev. T. C., Captain
Myles Standish,
Power, Eileen, Bibliography for
School Teachers of History,
Powicke, Rev. F. J., Story of
Baxter's ' Saints ' Everlasting
Rest, -
Powicke, Professor F. M., review
by, -----
Queen Mary, The Earl of Arran
and, by R. K. Hannay,
Queen Mary's Jewels, by J. Dun-
can Mackie,
Queen's University, Kingston,
Canada, Bulletin of, - 60,
Quennell, M. and C. H. B., A
History of Everyday Things in
England,
Quixote, Don, - -
Raleigh, Lecture on History, - 313
298 Rawlinson, H. G., British Begin-
nings in Western India, - -220
309 Religion in Scotland, - 140
Renwick, W. L., review by, - 306
Reviews of Books, 49, 117, 206, 290
Revue d'Histoire ecclesiastique, 150, 317
157 Revue Historique, - - 149,316
Ritchie, J., The Influence of Man on
291 Animal Life in Scotland, - - 145
Roberts, P. E., A Historic Geo-
graphy of the British Dependencies, 308
227 Robinson, Cyril E., A History of
England, 1485-1688, - - 140
Robinson, Gertrude, David
119 Urquhart, - 2 1 6
Rollins, H. F., Old English Ballads, 1 2 5
300 Roman Empire, The Tradition of
the, - - 306
305 Roman Law in Scotland, A note
on, - 66
313 Roman Pottery in the Museum,
Tullie House, Carlisle, Catalogue
219 of the,- - 214
Runic Inscriptions, A Corpus
59 of> - !S6
Russell, C. H., The Tradition of
291 the Roman Empire, - 306
Russia, Enticement of Scottish
Artificers to Denmark and, - 233
I 30 Rutherglen, The Early Charters of
the Royal Burgh of, by George
209 Gray,- - 54
314 St. Malachy in Scotland, by Rev.
Canon Wilson, 69, 227 ; notes
on, by Sir H. Maxwell, 228, 319
311 Samian Ware and the Chronology
of the Roman Occupation, by
210 S. N. Miller, - 199
Schofield, W. H., Mythical Bards
and the Life of William Wallace, 135
258 Scotland, A History of, by C. San-
ford Terry, - - 122
83 Scotland, Domestic Life in, by John
Warrack, - - 127
146 Scotland in 1768, The Eco-
nomic Position of, by John M.
Dickie, - 14
212 Scotland, Proceedings of the Society
313 of Antiquaries of, - - - 299
326
Index
Scotland, The Soda! and Industrial
History of, - - 303
Scottish Biblical Inscriptions in
France,by W. A. Craigie, 1 8 1 ;
note on, by A. W. Johnston, - 320
Scottish Church History Society,
proposed founding of a, - 320
Scottish Handicraft Industry, An
Old, by Isabel F. Grant, - 277
Scott, E. ]., Negro Migration dur-
ing the War, - 56
Scott, Ernest, Men and Thought in
Modern History, - - 310
Scott, Hew, Fasti Ecdesiae Scoti-
canae, - -145
Scott, W. R., reviews by, - 301, 307
Seton, Sir Bruce, A Seventeenth
Century Deal in Corn, 253 ;
review by, - 221
Seton, Walter, The Stuart Papers
at Windsor Castle, 171 ; The
Dalkeith Portrait of Mary
Queen of Scots, - - 152,235
Seventeenth Century Deal in
Corn, A, by Sir Bruce Seton,
Bart.,- - 253
Smith, David Baird, « Teste
Meipso ' and the Parochial
Law of Tithes, 36 ; Roman
Law in Scotland, 66 ; reviews
by, 150, 223, 312 ; Mr. Robert
Kirk's Notebook, - - 237
Social and Industrial History of
Scotland, The, by James
Mackinnon, - 303
Social History of England and
Wales, British Academy Records
of, - 301
Somersetshire Archaeological and
Natural History Society Proceed-
ings, - 6 1
Songs of the Gael, by Lachlan
Macbean, - -311
Spottiswoode's, Archbishop, His-
tory, note on by Dr. D. Hay
Fleming, - 320
Standish, Captain Myles, - - 209
Statescraft, Studies in, by Sir
Geoffrey Butler, - - 210
Steuart, A. Francis, reviews by,
57, 58, 140, 308, 309, 311
Steuart, Maria, The Dalkeith
Portrait of Mary Queen of Scots,
234
Stevenson, John, Two Centuries
of Life in Down, - ~ 57
Stevenson, J. H., review by, - 137
Stuart Papers at Windsor Castle,
The, by Walter Seton, 171 ;
Text of New Document, - 172
Subject Index to Periodicals, The,
1917-1919,- - 311
Tait, James, Chartulary oj the
Abbey of St. Werburgh, Chester, 128
Taylor, E. H., and I. B. Black,
The Empire' 's War Memorial, - 141
'Teste Meipso' and the Paro-
chial Law of Tithes, by D.
Baird Smith, - 36
Terry, C. Sanford, A History of
Scotland, - - 122
Thomson, Sheriff A. S. D., review
by, - - 290
Tour of Maryv, Queen of Scots,
through South-western Scot-
land, by Sir Herbert Maxwell, I
Tout, Professor T. F., Chapters
in the Administrative History
of Mediaeval England, 49 ;
Mediaeval Forgers and For-
geries, 59 ; The Captivity and
Death of Edward of Carnarvon, 143
Toscanelli, The Astronomer, - 58
Urquhart, David,
216
Vallance, Aymer, Old Crosses and
Lye Agates, - - 53
Vignaud, H., The Colombian
Tradition on the Discovery of
America, - 58
Viking Society, Saga-Book of the, - 1 44
Waddell, J. Jeffrey, The Western
Towers of Glasgow Cathedral, - 60
Wade, T. C., Borrough's Sove-
reignty of the British Seas, - 1 18
Wanderings in the Western High-
lands, by M. E. M. Donaldson, 305
War Records, Local, - 319
Inde
x
327
PACK PAGE
Ward, Sir A. W., Collected Papers, 221 Williams, J. W., reviews by, 50,293
Warrack, John, Domestic Life in Wilson, Rev. Canon, The Passages
Scotland, 14.88-1688, - - 127 of St. Malachy through Scot-
Watkins, Gordon S., Labor Prob- land, 69, 227; reviews by,
lems in United States, - - 312 128,209,219
Williams, A. M., review by, - 135 Windmill in Essex, illustration of, 213
Williamson, Dr. G. C., George, Winstanley, Lilian, Hamlet and
Third Earl of Cumberland, - 123 the Scottish Succession, - - 310
GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.
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